StrongMen
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Hello again to all our amazing supporters! It’s been 11 months since the announcement that I was teaming up with Ollie to work on a project to support grieving men by providing & delivering physical activity based retreats.
The fundraising effort in January raised approx. £3.5k which has enabled us to commence work on the project and seek extra funding. While progress has been a lot slower than previously anticipated, its given us time to
assess the project's aims and bring on board extra people to help shape and deliver “StrongMen” as a support service for men aged 18 to 55 who have suffered a bereavement of someone very close to them.
Ollie and I were in need of assistance and reached out to another SAS Who Dares Wins recruit who featured in season 2. “Efrem Brynin”, who suffered the loss of his son in Afganistan while serving in the British Armed Forces.
The final recruit into StrongMen is Alexandra Wells, an NHS mental health clinician who is able to help and advise us around all things related to mental health and the care and considerations we need to afford to the people we aim to help.
In the 11 months that have passed we have been able to fully register “StrongMen” as a legal entity, set up a bank account (Harder than it sounds) & apply for funding from various charitable funding foundations.
We are delighted to have been award a small grant from the “Little lottery fund” which has enabled us to fund start-up costs. The application process for the “Little lottery fund” takes around 10 weeks once the application is submitted. To have such a fantastic, well respected and established backer show belief and encouragement toward our project purely underpins our belief that there is a glaring need for such a service in our society. The “Little lottery fund” will only offer small grants to those applications who are completely vetted and can genuinely do some good with the funding so we are obviously massively encouraged by their support and thank them deeply for accepting us as beneficiary.
We have commenced work on building an online presence through a fantastic new website and the various social media platforms and been able to put in place the required equipment needed to run the organisation.
The next steps have been agreed and we hope to officially launch the service in December, with our first event planned for Spring 2019! More details on that to be released during our launch.
While we are busy preparing for our December launch, we will also be out there actively looking for corporate sponsorship. This service will need all the backing it can get to reach & help as many people as possible and enable us to deliver as many of these retreats as possible alongside developing the “StrongMen” support service portfolio.
Thank you all from the bottom of our hearts on the support you showed us so far and we will keep you all up to date on progress over the coming weeks.
Yours gratefully,
Dan, Ollie, Efrem & Alex - The StrongMen team.
The fundraising effort in January raised approx. £3.5k which has enabled us to commence work on the project and seek extra funding. While progress has been a lot slower than previously anticipated, its given us time to
assess the project's aims and bring on board extra people to help shape and deliver “StrongMen” as a support service for men aged 18 to 55 who have suffered a bereavement of someone very close to them.
Ollie and I were in need of assistance and reached out to another SAS Who Dares Wins recruit who featured in season 2. “Efrem Brynin”, who suffered the loss of his son in Afganistan while serving in the British Armed Forces.
The final recruit into StrongMen is Alexandra Wells, an NHS mental health clinician who is able to help and advise us around all things related to mental health and the care and considerations we need to afford to the people we aim to help.
In the 11 months that have passed we have been able to fully register “StrongMen” as a legal entity, set up a bank account (Harder than it sounds) & apply for funding from various charitable funding foundations.
We are delighted to have been award a small grant from the “Little lottery fund” which has enabled us to fund start-up costs. The application process for the “Little lottery fund” takes around 10 weeks once the application is submitted. To have such a fantastic, well respected and established backer show belief and encouragement toward our project purely underpins our belief that there is a glaring need for such a service in our society. The “Little lottery fund” will only offer small grants to those applications who are completely vetted and can genuinely do some good with the funding so we are obviously massively encouraged by their support and thank them deeply for accepting us as beneficiary.
We have commenced work on building an online presence through a fantastic new website and the various social media platforms and been able to put in place the required equipment needed to run the organisation.
The next steps have been agreed and we hope to officially launch the service in December, with our first event planned for Spring 2019! More details on that to be released during our launch.
While we are busy preparing for our December launch, we will also be out there actively looking for corporate sponsorship. This service will need all the backing it can get to reach & help as many people as possible and enable us to deliver as many of these retreats as possible alongside developing the “StrongMen” support service portfolio.
Thank you all from the bottom of our hearts on the support you showed us so far and we will keep you all up to date on progress over the coming weeks.
Yours gratefully,
Dan, Ollie, Efrem & Alex - The StrongMen team.
Organizer
Ollie Ollerton
Organizer
