Anna Coates & Friends, of which I’m one, are members of a community group affiliated to the National Charity PHAB UK called Festival Friends. Our annual Pimms & Icecream event fundraiser is an inclusive community event offering up delicious free Icecream & cool refreshing fruit infused Pimms.

Festival Friends was initially formed due to funding cuts and our then young people not being able to access their favourite holiday of the year at Mersea Island Festival. All our volunteers have supported the festival which offers inclusive holidays for young people and adults with physical and learning disabilities. We just couldn’t let this group of young people not access their Holiday so we set up our community group to enable these young people to be able to attend the festival.

Since the group was founded, in addition to attending Mersea Island Festival each year, we’ve been away at weekends to Haven Caravan Holidays & elsewhere. The ethos of the group is have fun and enable independence.

We do not receive any funding for the group. We have to pay for Public Liability Insurance, Affiliations Fees and also our most costly outgoing is volunteer places on our trips away and without our volunteer team none of these opportunities would take place.

Our hope is that as many people as possible, old friends and new, attend our Pimms & Icecream afternoon in person. For those who are unable to attend our Pimms & Icecream event in person on the day and who would like to make a contribution we have set up this Just Giving page. If we are able to raise enough money to pay for annual public liability assurance, it will be a great. We as a group can then focus on raising funds for fun activities.

On behalf of our Festival Friends, thank you for supporting our exceptional and inspiring group.