Nic Mault, a physiotherapist from St Alban’s, is running her first ever marathon on Sunday and we are delighted that she has chosen to run for ThePromise, a first for us too!  With only 2 days to go she is just £75 away from her amazing target of raising £500 (+GiftAid) for ThePromise – please help her beat her target and give her a boost for the big day by sponsoring her.

It will make a difference to her and it will make a difference to the hundreds of disabled children ThePromise help in Russia.

Tickets to our 10th Birthday Party are now SOLD OUT!

If you would like to be added to the reserve list please email Jo and you will be contacted in the event of further tickets becoming available.

Wednesday 26th June, 7pm

Pembroke Lodge, Richmond Park

Join us for a fun evening of food, drink, live entertainment and great prizes! All proceeds will go straight to helping the children we work with in Russia.

If you are not able to come to the party but would like to support ThePromise please click here to make a donation.

Take a look at our recent Newsletter for information on who’s doing what for ThePromise, upcoming events and some exciting news on our big plans for 2013!

Remember you can support our work by donating via JustGiving, taking part in a sponsored event for us or why not come and party with us in June to celebrate a fantastic 10years and help raise funds for many more to come!

TheBigGive 2012

The BigGive was an amazing success again raising a grand total of £7,218!

Thank you to everyone who pledged and donated, with your help we managed to access all our match funding!

This money will go toward helping diabled children we work with in the community. Families who keep their disabled children at home get little or no support in Russia.  Through our community Portage team we can provide weekly visits by a trained Portage worker to help the children, and thier families, learn and develop.

Our established community project in Ryazan is thriving, but with more children requiring our services every month we need to train and recruit more Portage workers, the money raised through TheBigGive will help us do this.  We also have contacts with a centre outside St Petersburg who are very keen to start a community project and we hope to make this a reality by working with them this year.

Thank you again to everyone who made TheBigGive such a success in 2012 and we are already excited about taking part again in 2013!

A RUSSIAN FAIRYTALE

ThePromise was very happy to support the screening of this beautiful, tragic and compelling UK Premiere of A Russian Fairytale.  The beautifully shot film told the story of a group of young people fighting to survive on the streets of the post-soviet city of Perm. Unfortunately there were no happy endings for these young adults but, after talking with the film-makers, hopefully the charities that are working to help prevent younger kids going on the streets will help this stop in the future.

  Members of the commnity portage team in Ryazan organised a wonderful Christmas Party for the children and their families. Father Frost came and gave each child presents, which were kindly funded by the local Social Protection (council), of toys and sweets. The Portgae workers put on a fairytale show and children enjoyed painting, making snow flakes and dancing.

It was one of the rare occasions families get to meet and socialise in a safe and relaxed place where their children can just be themselevs. Well done Natasha and her team!

“The Big Give Week”

We were delighted to be part of The Big Give Christmas Challenge this year for the first time. The Big Give week is an exciting way for our supporters to make a Christmas donation which is then  DOUBLED  by an external sponsor fund and some wonderful supporters of ours who kick started this campaign with some very generous pledges. An enormous thank you goes to the seven supporters who made our participation in the week possible.

As many of you will have found out, the Big Give week got off to a very rocky start with technical problems on their site. We know that this prevented many from donating and we can only apologise profusely for time and energy that was wasted on this. It must have been incredibly frustrating. We are taking this up with the Big Give directly to reassure ourselves that it won’t happen again if we decide to take part next year.

On the very positive side, we hit our target by Wednesday thanks to your speed and generosity and we were thrilled to exceed our target by the end of the week. To those of you who were lucky enough to have got your donation accepted, thank you so much. We know it took many of you several attempts and are just extremely grateful for your tenacity to keep going!

In the end we raised a magnificent total of £6,905. This will ensure that 16 children in Yelatma orphanage will receive daily Portage sessions for the next year. This is an incredible gift to give them – life changing in fact.

If you didn’t manage to donate last week, but would like to make a donation, our Big Give page is still open for donations.  Just follow this link.

Once again, a huge thank you for your wonderful support We’re incredibly grateful.

ThePromise 1/2 Marathon Walk by Torchlight was a huge success! With sponsorship still coming in we have so far raised more than double what we hoped – £4,143.25 is the current total. Our JustGiving Page is still open and we would like to thank everyone who took part and of course everyone who showed their support through sponsorship. A particularly big Thank You goes to our top fundraiser, Maria Scott. For more details about the walk and to see pictures please click here.

On Saturday 29th September 2012, with the sun shining, 31 willing walkers met at Teddington Train Station ready to set off on a walk into the dark! Kids and adults alike were all set with their torches and off we went towards Bushy Park.  Thanks to Fran of FranSirl Fitness we had an amazing walk,going through the park, where some of us were lucky enough to encounter some deer up close, around past Hampton Court Palace and then on along the Thames towards Kingston. A good pace was set and we reached the halfway mark as planned. A welcome drink was had and some of the younger walkers headed home after completing a 1/4 of a marathon – well done guys!

And so, with our torches on, off we set again into the darkness, along the river towards Richmond. Owls were heard along the way and in the light of a full moon some amazing sights were seen.

Well done everyone and thank you for helping us raise over £3,500 so far!!!

After a huge response to our walk this Saturday (29th) and lots of requests to bring children we would love to get the kids (9-14yrs) involved and invite them to join the first half of the walk (approx. 6miles) until the halfway stopping point.  Children must be 9 years+, accompanied by an adult at all times and those under 14yrs will need collecting at the halfway stop. Please contact Jo Pritchard for further details and to register!