Coronavirus is bad news for everyone and we sincerely hope that everyone, including friends and supporters of our rescue boat and our local communities are doing OK, and keeping as safe and as healthy as possible over this difficult time.

Although our rescue boat volunteers are unable to gather together at the moment, work carries on quietly behind the scenes to keep us rescue-ready, tso we can respond to emergencies and save lives as needed.

However, as an independent rescue service, keeping ourselves afloat (financially and literally) is a concern. To be honest, it’s also a major challenge in the current lockdown situaton.

Ordinarily at this time of year, our May Open Day would be coming up, and would have generated some of the funds needed to keep our charity afloat during the summer. But now that this, our primary annual fundraiser, is cancelled until at least September, we’re thinking differently. Certainly, the challenge is to raise funds from behind closed doors, to help us keep our lovely local beaches safe once lockdown is lifted.

And there is a way we can do it … with no risk to anyone but with a bit of help from our friends!

 

Welcome to our #SofaSurfingShoppingChallenge!

With the switch to online grocery shopping, there’s now an extra way to help us raise funds but without costing anyone a penny extra. Several of the major supermarkets, as well as other retailers, give to charities through the Give As You Live shopping platform. By signing up to support PettLlevel Independent Rescue Boat as your chosen charity within Give As You Live, then shopping through the portal, you could help us raise money.

We previously wrote a how-to post on this, which you can read here.

Just taking the extra time to do this, and shopping through the Give As You Live platform instead of going direct to the websites of your favourite shops, you will be taking a small extra step that could make a big difference to us.

We have several fundraising projects on the go, but we’ll call this one our #SofaSurfingShoppingChallenge! All funds raised will go into our running costs pot, which helps us with onging maintenance and equipment.

 

Now then … we’d love to start of with a goal of £500 for this!

 

Too much, too little? Who knows? One thing’s for sure though, £500 is a drop in the ocean compared to our annual running costs of around £7,500! So what we do know is that we’d appreciate any support you can give us, perhaps through shopping and sharing our #SofaSurfingShoppingChallenge!

We’re launching this campaign on our social media today too (Facebook @PettLevelRescueBoat  and Twitter @PLIRBRescue) and will add updates there as well as here on the blog, to let you know how much progress we’re making. Thanks so much for getting involved with our #SofaSurfingShoppingChallenge!