Nearly 1 Year

It has been nearly 1 year since we started our project. To be exact it will be 1 year old on the 8th of October 2016.

DROP IN CENTRE
Our now registered charity has gone from strength to strength and as you might know we are trying our hardest to secure property to get this much needed drop in centre up and running.  We are still waiting on our premises but have gone ahead and started looking for other premises although none will be as suitable as the one we first went to see. Most places are looking for at least £300 per calendar month so to rent for a year we are talking £3,600. i would love to be able to make half of that so that we can secure tenancy for at least 6 months. Can you help us get to £1,800? We badly need donations.

Donations can be made in 3 ways.
Bank Transfer is easiest as it doesnt charge us anything to receive the money where paypal and gofundme take a percentage, sometimes as high as 15%

Voluntary Action Fund
We have been awarded £1,000 from the voluntary action fund to help with our charity. We are unable to use any awarded money for rent on property so we still need the full amount of £1,800 to get us started somewhere.

Please Help. Please Share

 

North Ayrshire Youth Bank

We would love to let you all know that the North Ayrshire Youth Bank have donated £1,000 to our cause. As we have a silly amount of boxes at the moment the money is going to our furniture and also somewhere to store the furniture while we wait on our premises getting ready.

YES!!! we are STILL waiting on the ok for the premises. It is getting pretty ridiculous now. We have been waiting months and i feel bad constantly chasing them up about it but i have now started looking at other premises. We cant wait forever. We need this drop in up and running desparately.

We hope to order a suite and some shelves and pick up a second hand TV, dvd player and games console.

Keep and eye out for our updates and remember you can donate at gofund.me/littlebox

On a personal note i would like to let you all know that i went to a meeting today to find out about becoming a See Me Community Champion. I hope this is the future for me but do not worry about the charity. It is my priority and i hope to link it into See Me in the future.

Thanks all.

Donations Requires

Hi everyone,

As we are now a registered charity we are hoping to get our premises sorted soon. It has been a few weeks and we STILL havnt heard. I managed to purchase a desk for the office but we are in need of other office furniture and other donations. If you could donate any of the following and are in the ayrshire area or willing to post please get in touch at littleboxofdistractions@talktalk.net

Book Shelves
Coffee Tables
Suite/Sofa or ChairsLarge Dining Table and Chairs
TV

Board Games (complete)
Jigsaws
Games Console/Games
Books (especially any self-help)
Craft sets or spare craft things e.g wool, card, threads, decoupage, cutters etc

We would really appreciate any donations of the above. please keep an eye out for us too.

Cash donations can be made at gofund.me/littlebox or paypal.me/littlebox

Contact Kerry at littleboxofdistractions@talktalk.net

Help Needed

Hi everyone. Things have been a little quiet recently. We have been reluctant to take on many more requests due to the fact that our stock is depleting. Yes it has been amazing that people are happy to pay £3 for the postage of their box, this has meant we have been able to sent a lot more, but our stock has taken a bash recently and we are in desperate need of around £60 to get our stock levels back up.

Can you help?

Can you donate?

You can donate at our gofund me page (the link is on the tab above)

Please donate so that we can get this service back up and running again.

Meeting

We have held a meeting today and sorted out some things that needed touched up on. We have recently spoken to our local councellor and he raised a good few points about how we target people for the boxes. We obviously have to make the service available to everyone with mental health issues but the problem was that we would have people asking for a box when they dont require one, meaning that people who really need one would need to wait longer. We have come up with the solution of asking for the postage for the box. The postage is £3. The reason we ask for this is that it costs around £5 to make a free box and that £3 could go towards making another box instead of posting 1 box.

Our funders ask us how much of the project we fund ourselves through donations and fundraising. At the moment our percentage is really low and the funding wont pay out to cover a large percentage of our costs. We have to show them that we can sustain ourselves with as little help as possible. So the £3 postage is a big help to our percentage meaning we are more likely to get more funding therefor helping more people. Donating can go a long way.

In the near future we are going to be looking for councils and other services to throughout the UK to hold onto some boxes for us so that we can provide them for free and give people the address of their local pickup point.

If you would like to donate to help us please do so at paypal.me/littlebox

Thanks

Happy New Year

I hope everyone had a nice xmas and new year. I had a great time. My laptop charger broke so i have had very little time to do any advertising for the project. On another note i have been looking into premises and getting the stuff moved from the house and into somewhere else.

We are going to need donations towards getting a work space so that we can get boxes out much quicker and help more people.

We are in the process of registering as a charity so keep an eye out for that coming up. Then we can apply for funding.

We are arranging a fundraiser in Saltcoats, Ayrshire, Scotland on the 27th of February from 11am-3pm and the first 50 kids through the door get a free plastic cup. Our local paper will be writing another article on the fundraiser too.

We are looking for donations for the raffle/tombola so if you have anything you dont want/need such as unwanted xmas gift sets etc please let me know if you would like to donate them and we can arrange how we could get it from you.

Take Care

 

Logo Competition

I hope everyone had a great xmas and are all ready for the new year. I personally don’t like celebrating new year. I cant stand all the hugs and kisses and “happy new year” to anyone you meet in the first week of January. I have always experienced anxiety around new year.

So in the new year our project will be getting a revamp! In January we are hoping to become a registered charity, open our bank account, apply for funding and re-brand with a new logo. The logo we are using is from vistaprint so other companies can use that too. We want something unique for us. We are looking for people to design the new logo for us and send it to us by Sunday 10th of January. The person that has designed the new logo will receive a prize. I have not decided what it will be yet. So get designing and e-mail them to littleboxofdistractions@talktalk.net

Anyway i will say my goodbyes and keep an eye out on our facebook page for the competition entries for our logo and cast your vote.

 

 

Xmas

Its only a few days until Christmas. I cant believe how fast this year has gone and more to the point i cant believe i have been running this project for 2 1/2 months already. It has been so successful.

We have helped over 90 people in that time and raised nearly £900. Maybe we can reach £1,000 by the new year? It would be amazing to say that we reached that goal.

I would like to thank everyone who donated to ensure that our service users got an xmas card and we have had feedback from people saying it wasn’t expected and it was a lovely gesture.

We are in the process of organising a craft fair in our local town (Saltcoats, Ayrshire, Scotland) for the end of February. If anyone is interested in a stall please get in touch.

We have now settled down for xmas. All orders have been sent out now and i am up to date with everything. We don’t plan on sending anything out over the next 2 weeks due to the time it takes for post to get delivered and im worried the boxes get lost.  I am using this time to do some advertising and making up boxes to stock ready for requests. I can finally be ahead of myself.

We would like to wish everyone a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year from everyone here at The Little Box of Distractions.

If you need support over the holidays please feel free to join our Facebook support group called “little box of distractions follow up” xx

Take Care.

XxXxX

£50 to Go

Oh My! We are in December. Can you believe it?

I hoped to raise £100 (making the total so far £800) by the 5th of December so i can afford stamps to send an xmas card to people that have received the boxes. The cards are all wrote out, addressed and waiting for the stamps. We have only raised £50 of that £100. I would appreciate if people could share share share the page and get more people donating to us.you can donate at gofund.me/littlebox

I have a talk to do tomorrow at the local college to some members of “The Hive”. I am going to talk about my past and how i got to where i am now and more about the little box of distractions.

I have been making project/charity ribbons for the little box of distractions and bag ribbons. You can get one for a £1 donation plus 50p postage. Yet again donate it at the link above.

X-Mas is Coming

Hi Everyone,

1 Month today and it will be Christmas Day. I am really looking forward to spending my day with my Fiancee (our first xmas). I have spoilt her but i still cant stop buying. I see something and think “omg she would love it” and it gets bought.

I am lucky. I have family to spend x-mas with but others don’t. There are so many charities wanting to help people for christmas but it is all “help the kids” or “help the elderly” how about helping the people with mental health problems? Well that is where we come in. This year we hope to send out some xmas cards to our members who have donated. We would also like to send to people who havn’t donated too but funds wont allow. If we can raise £100 by Dec 5th i will personally hand write all of our xmas cards and send them out. i dont mind paying for the cards but stamps are expensive nowadays.

Please help people get boxes. Please help them get a christmas card from someone who cares.

please donate

gofund.me/littlebox