Auction of Promises - Huge Success

The Auction of Promises was a stunning success. We raised over £6,300 for Wye Centre. Thanks to everybody who contributed, worked towards the event, and most importantly put in those bids. Everybody had a good time and many people's Christmas stockings will benefit! A special thanks to Tom at the Tickled Trout who generously donated the evening meal. Planning permission has now been submitted, we are attracting significant funds, and we look forward to a very positive New Year.

Fund-raising for Stage 1 of the Wye Centre project has now swung into action, later than we would have wished because of delays over getting the planning application submitted. Our major target currently is to get a convincing bid into KCC before the end of the year, for the maximum allowed, £50,000. Apart from other stringent conditions, this bid has to be match-funded with a equal amount from elsewhere.

At present, we expect to have just over £20,000 in the Wye Centre 'pot' by the end of this month. This has been helped by a generous donation of £5,000 from an anonymous well-wisher plus many other fund raising efforts such as a Scrabble evening etc.

In November the committee were agreed that a further £15,000 should be immediately transferred to the Wye Centre account from our general funds. It should be noted that this money is unlikely to be spent for a considerable time. However, it would raise our project funds to over £35,000, within striking distance of the total target!

We cannot afford to risk losing the KCC grant, which is really our only hope of the project getting off the ground next year.