Everyone here at Pett Level Independent Rescue Boat is pleased to say a heart-felt huge thank you to Kit and Jan McLean, of  Elm Tree Bootsale for their extremely welcome donation of £1,000 to our charity.

In this awful year, it’s been hard for us to fund raise in the community and it’s also been hard for the community to support a charity. However,  the parking fee contributed by visitors to the local Icklesham bootsale has meant life-saving support to us.

Of course, the Elm Tree bootsale itself has also been challenged by the pandemic. The prolonged lockdown and the restrictions on gatherings means that across the bootsale ‘season’ as a whole, bootsales were only able to take place 7 times at Elm Tree,  instead of the usual 14.

But as Kit and Jan are aware of our particular challenges this year, so they were keen that their annual donation to support a charity which is completely self-funded should still go ahead. 

After all, Kit and Jan have particular empathy for charities run by volunteers, where the donations are used to directly support the cause.  So, when visitors to the bootsale contribute a 50p parking fee, Kit and Jan donate this directly to local causes. As a result, across the 20+ years they have been running the Elm Tree Bootsale, Kit and Jan estimate they have raised and donated in the region of £100,000 to local charities.

 

“We try to do quite a bit for Five Villages Minibus, The MOPPs and the POPPs – our donation buys a Christmas dinner for local pensioners – Friends of the Conquest Hospital, Fairlight Playgroup, Rother Responders and other local charities.

We’re happy to be making this donation to support a charity like the PLIRB because it’s a local charity and it all helps local people. I was in the PLIRB crew many years ago and if we save one life, it’s worth it.”

Kit McLean

Our Treasurer, Stella Dunn, pictured with Kit and Jan McLean, said:

“We’re extremely grateful to Kit and Jan McLean for their continued support. The unexpected situation this year has caused us significant difficulties with fundraising to meet our running costs. This donation will really help to breach the real short-fall caused by not being able to hold our annual Open Day Fundraiser, due to lockdown. Specifically, this donation will be used for essential equipment repairs and replacements.

We’d also like to say thank you to the people who support the bootsale, either as a seller or a customer, as not many people realise that the parking fee at the bootsale helps to support community charities such as ours.”

With the pandemic closing down our community fundraising, and the ring-fence around the government’s support for charities being a complete barrier to us, it’s fair to say things are a bit hard going. However, we’ve had some brilliant help from our friends and we’ve been thinking creatively about ways to raise funds to meet our £10k a year running costs through other means.

Of course, even though no one is ‘out there’ for fun community events, there’s no reason why we can’t put a bit of FUN into our fundraising. And speaking of which, we’ve just launched our charity photo competition …

 

Yes, our Pawfect Pet Photo competition is under way! It all takes place online, so keeping everyone safe with no community face-to-face, but still a way to enjoy some fun with our friends!

And speaking of which, friend of the PLIRB charity, comedian Jo Brand, is going to be our virtual judge!

Honourary PLIRB pooch Seamus gives full details over on the Giving Page, but here’s also a general overview below.

There are 6 fun categories (and no, you don’t have to be a cat)!

* FLUFFIEST PET * includes those of you with fluffy feathers and even fleeces … if you’re fluffy, get your photo in!

* HELPFUL PET * whether you’re a qualified assistance animal, or a pet that’s super helpful around the home, garden or work, this could be the category for you. All it takes is a photo of you being helpful (whether you were invited to or not) and Jo will judge you!

* SCARY PET * scary and hairy, bald and blood-curdling, toothy and terrifying? Don’t worry, you have a place in our hearts and our competition. Even if you’re normally nice but you got caught on camera having a bad day, let’s see that scary side of you!

* HAPPIEST PET * because everyone knows a goldfish can smile, right? Whether it’s a toothy grin or a ‘caught-on-camera’ grimace, give us a smile for the camera!

* ALL-ACTION PET * got a shot of your pet going all out to get among the action? Then this is your category – please share!

* ONE OF THE FAMILY * are you a dog, cat, even a rabbit that resembles its owner? Perhaps you’re a goat that thinks it’s one of the kids? However it works, let’s have a look at those family photos. For this category though, please be sure you’re happy for the persons to be included please.

TO ENTER:

1) Please send an email with picture attached to plirbphotocomp@gmail.com and within the email please include:

* Pet name

* Category for entry

* Contact telephone number.

* Please could you also state if you are happy for the photo to be shared on our social media?

2) For each photo entry you submit, it would be fabulous if you could make a donation of £5 on the Giving Page. Just use the donation button and add the pet name and category to the message part of the donation. You could also add your own message if you’d like to – we love to hear from our supporters!

The competition closes at 5 pm on Sunday 11th October. After this, no more entries will be accepted and Judge Jo Brand will have the seriously hard task of choosing the Pawfect Pet for each category.

Winners will be announced on #winningwednesday 14th October – which also happens to be Hastings Day, a nod to our local area and our Hastings-celebrity judge!

And prizes?

* Categories: for each category, the winner chosen by Jo will receive a rosette, certificate and a pack of our greetings cards (each winner can choose from our 8 lovely pack options, kindly sponsored by Static Trader).

* Overall: from the 6 category winners, Jo will also pick an overall competition winner, for the prize of a 20cm x 30 cm canvas, printed by Max Spielmann at Hastings (Churchwood Drive Tesco Extra). The canvas can be of any photo of the winner’s choice – it doesn’t have to be the competition entry (unless you want it to be of course)!

Thanks Max Spielmann and Jo Brand for making this possible!

The competition is open now, so please get your entries into our charity photo competition soon! And don’t forget to look out on our social media for pup-dates! 

 

As our supporters know, the pandemic has had a serious impact on our ability to fundraise to meet our running costs. But we have some exciting news! Rye Harbour-based company, Static Trader has chosen us as their charity to support for the next 12 months. What’s more, they have made a donation which will help out with both costs and fundraising!

 

Byron Whiteside, General Manager of local company Static Trader is no stranger to some of the volunteers here at the PLIRB – two of our team work at Static Trader! After chatting to these volunteers, Byron realised how the pandemic has affected our charity. In particular, as a businessman, Byron recognised that there’s a real problem when there are costs to pay but very little income since our major fundraisers in 2020 were cancelled due to the Covid pandemic.

Byron was keen to help, not only by choosing our rescue boat as Static Trader’s local charity to support, but also by taking care of one of our costs for us .. with a sponsorship donation of £1,000.

This very welcome donation is to fund the costs of printing our promotional merchandise, informational materials and posters. It will also help towards administrative printing costs.

“Giving my time is something I would have preferred to do, and something I’d love to do with Pett Level Independent Rescue Boat – I recognise how valuable their work is through my colleagues who volunteer with the boat. But although I can’t give my time in the same way they do, what I can do is give a donation and a helping hand to the charity.”

A donation, and then some …

This support is extremely timely for us, coming just in time to allow us to be able to have some charity greetings cards printed up. These have proved a popular fundraiser in the past. At the time of the discussions, the Ocean Ceramics Mad Hatter’s event was just around the corner as the only fundraiser event on our behalf all year! Thanks to the Static Trader donation and a quick printing turnaround, we were able to provide friend of the PLIRB Marian Mason with some of our cards to sell on the day. And sell she did, you can read all about that here!

Because it’s in this way, that Byron’s donation does more for us than ‘just’ help meet costs. Without this donation, we certainly wouldn’t have been able to create merchandise to sell over the coming months and into 2021, which would have been yet another fundraising source lost to us.

What’s more, having the cost of printing covered by the donation means that every penny one of our items is sold for comes straight back to us as funds raised. In turn, this will help us meet other running costs. Something our Treasurer, Stella Dunn is delighted about:

“The treasurer’s role in a charity is always a fine balancing act – we need to raise funds continually and promote our services but often the cost is prohibitive. The sponsorship of our promotional fundraising goods by Static Trader is most welcome and generous, especially in this most challenging year when other avenues and opportunities have been so limited.”

Whilst it hasn’t yet been possible for Byron to come down to the boathouse for a formal thank you, a visit soon is on the cards (see what we did there?). In the meantime, Static Trader customers will have access to the donation pot which is now in the business’s sales office and PLIRB supporters will be able to look out for our brand new items for sale.

Sincere thanks to Byron Whiteside and Static Trader, from everyone at Pett Level Independent Rescue Boat

Whilst you’re here …

As an independent charity providing rescue services, we are run solely by volunteers. We receive no government or central funding, so we have to fundraise every penny needed to buy and maintain our equipment.

We also fundraise to pay our considerable running costs. Since the start of 2020, these have increased to over £10,000 a year.

If you like the work we do and would like to support us, your donation would really be appreciated.

Anything you can spare will help us to help those in danger on our local coastline.

Thank you so much, from the volunteers at Pett Level Independent Rescue Boat.