The Friends were delighted to hear that the kind people behind the Last Night of the Croydon Proms, which holds a gala fundraising event each year at Fairfield Halls to raise money for local youth causes, has pledged £2,000 towards the renovation of the playground. We will be plugging sales for their forthcoming gala fundraiser in September on our Facebook Page and our upcoming fundraising events. The trustees of the Friends of Grange Park, Old Coulsdon, will be attending their gala fundraising event in September.
Blog
Fundraising success at Yule Fest 2014!
On the weekend of 5th and 6th December 2014, the Friends manned a tombola stall at Coulsdon's Christmas festival, Yule Fest. It was a bitingly cold weekend, but the Friends' determination to raise money for our playground reaped rewards since we managed to raise £985 from the tombola! This is a huge boost to our fundraising. Collectively we had managed to source around £800 worth of prizes from local businesses and generous donations from members of the community, and we are extremely grateful for their support. Thank you also to the members of our community who came along to our stall, and to the organisers of Yule Fest.
Lene Fulbrook manning the stall at one of our quieter moments.
Announcing charity status for the Friends of Grange Park, Old Coulsdon
We are delighted to announce that the Friends are now registered with the Charity Commission! We are officially the Friends of Grange Park, Old Coulsdon (Registered Charity Number 1159938), and at this present time our campaign is focused on fundraising to refurbish the children's play area in Grange Park. The trustees would like to thank our Treasurer, Ray Haxton, for his hard work in overseeing the application to the Charity Commission.
The Friends' Christmas Tree goes up in Old Coulsdon!
The Friends were proud to bring to Old Coulsdon village its first ever community Christmas Tree on 2 December 2014. The 20 foot spruce was kindly donated to the Friends fundraising campaign by Spencer, the Manager and Owner of Crossways Nursery. The tree is hosted by Beadles Kia in Coulsdon and Churches Together in Coulsdon, who made generous donations to the Friends' campaign in return for 'hosting' the tree. The Friends are very grateful to Andrew Young of WES Electrical, who gave his time freely to arrange the lighting cabling for the tree and to connect up the lights. Finally, we could not have managed the tree set up without the Coulsdon College Estates Management Team, who gave up their time to help set up and secure the tree.
Here are some photographs of the moment the tree was erected. It was a cold day in December, but plenty of people in the community turned out to support the Friends. In the evening we hosted a tree decoration event, and we've included some photos of that too.
Old Coulsdon's First Ever Community Christmas Tree!
The Friends are delighted to be bringing Old Coulsdon Village its first ever community Christmas Tree! Crossways Nursery have kindly donated a 20 foot spruce to our fundraising campaign; Beadles Kia and Churches together in Coulsdon have given generous donations to the Friends in return for 'hosting' this year's tree. You can read more here...
'Design your Dream Playground' competition winners!
We are delighted to announce the winners of our 'Design your Dream Playground' competition. We received over 100 entries, so many of which showed incredible artistic flair and imagination and we are very grateful to all those children who submitted entries as this will help inform our designs for the playground.
George Ioannou, local artist and owner of Art Rebellion in Coulsdon, had the extremely difficult task of deciding the winning entries and presented the winners with goodie bags filled with gifts from local businesses on Tuesday 18 November 2014 at Art Rebellion. Prizes included craft activities from Tesco, a £10 gift voucher from Lorimers, a family day pass for Kidspace and a free swimming lesson with the Surrey Orcas.
George has very generously framed each of the winning entries, and is exhibiting them in his Gallery for the coming week!
Coulsdon CofE winners- Jessica Grant (4-7) and Zach Drolet (8-11)
Oasis Academy Byron- Jia Luo (4-7) and Adam bin mohd Shukri (8-11)
Keston Primary- Katie Payne (4-7) and Mitch Mulinder (8-11)
The winning entries are shown below. Well done everyone!
The Friends would like to thank Michael John Sansom for once again giving up his time to take very professional photographs at this event.
