Elsie is on another mission. Well, 2 missions actually – 1) to raise money for her Cambodian friends and 2) to become a human rainbow! To do this she is hoping to run 5k in ‘The Colour Run’ in Brighton on September 23rd. With your help and support, I’m sure she can achieve both!

As many of you already know, Elsie has carried out quite a bit of fund raising over her little life for children less fortunate than herself through a variety of activities such as a sponsored swim which raised over £1100, ticketed pizza parties for her friends, cake sales and a singing performance.

Her most recent fund-raising event was to raise money for SOID (Supporting Orphans and Indigent people of Cambodia for Development); a school in Siem Reap, Cambodia which holds a special place in our hearts. It’s a small village school that provides a free education to 180 children aged between 5 and 15. The children are too poor to go to a government school as they have to pay a fee to get into the classroom, so SOID provides them with an opportunity to get an education. All families are even given free rice and health checks as an incentive for parents to send their children to school rather than out to work. A close friend is a director and Elsie has been helping her to raise money for the school. One way she did this was by challenging her friends to raise enough money (anywhere between £5-£100) to buy one item from the school’s monthly shopping list such as ‘Fruit on Fridays’ or rice or water for a family for a week. Amazingly, they managed to raise enough money to buy every item on the list!

So far, the fund raising has helped to enable classrooms to be painted with educational resources that we take for granted, books have been bought (although shipping is a real problem) and a close friend has also trained the teachers to be able to teach a phonics programme. One of the pictures attached is of some toys etc that Elsie and her little friends donated being distributed through a pass the parcel/quiz activity; the gratitude on those little faces is impossible to miss. The children there have nothing and yet are rarely seen without a smile on their faces. They love going to school and are so eager to learn.

In October this year, we are taking Elsie to visit the children at their school and she has already planned a song to teach them along with ‘a bit of phonics’, she says! We are hoping to take some basic school supplies with us such as pencils, erasers etc as they desperately need them and in order to raise cash Elsie is going to run the 5K colour run in her attempt to transform herself into a human rainbow!

If you would like to make a difference to these gorgeous children’s lives then please help Elsie to raise the cash – all donations are very much needed and appreciated, no matter how small.

Thank you so much! Oh, and because Elsie is too young to run on her own in the race, I have to do it too – and anyone who knows me will know how much I hate running! It’ll be my first bit of training for the 10k I’ve signed up for next year - should be entertaining!