We are extremely lucky and very grateful to the organisers, coaches, ASA swimming clubs, medical team and Bristol University Centre for Sport, Exercise and Health (High Performance Squad) who all are providing their services free of charge in order to promote swimming and help local children. This instruction and expertise alone would cost many many thousands if we had to pay for it.
We are also very grateful to blueseventy, our kit sponsor. blueseventy has provided our swimmers with superb wetsuits as well as other brilliant swimming accessories. Take a look at their website www.blueseventy.co.uk
However, there will still be some significant and unavoidable costs involved, in particular the hire of the boat and skipper for the actual swim (including insurance and paperwork fees this will be approximately £4,000). We have calculated that overall we need to raise a bare minimum of £10,000 to fund the attempt, above that would give the children opportunities for more varied training, for example the team would benefit from training in Lake Windermere or the Scilly Isles but currently do not have the funds to do so.
In order to raise the money we are planning :
* to attract a title sponsor
* a number of exciting events (including An evening with TV historian DAN SNOW on January 15th 2010)
* we are also going to ask each of the final team of 8 to come up with some ingenious methods of their own to raise money for the venture – this is all crucial experience for the young adventurer so far we’ve seen sponsored swims (no surprise there! ) to the selling of a large garden Christmas tree and making of Christmas hampers.
* to apply for sports funding from organisations keen to promote the new Olympic discipline of open water swimming (Open Water swimming became an Olympic sport in Beijing and there are high hopes for the GB team in 2012)
* As well as funding this project, the girls and boys of BEST will also be raising money for charity (15% of anything we raise at fundraising events will go to the Bristol based Children’s Hospices UK and Surf Life Saving GB).
If you would like to find out more about sponsoring this exciting venture please contact Steven Clarke (BEST fundraising and media) on 0771-867-9848,
