I am going to Peru in the middle of June to build houses for people who are too poor and most of the time too ill to be able to do it themselves.  A number of the employees of Amoria Bond and I have each paid £1000 out of our hard earned money to fly out to Peru and to build these houses completely for free whilst staying in a shelter and eating rice! This is going to be particularly challenging for me as I have extremely bad eating habits (MacDonalds, KFC, Frankie & Benny's feature in my weekly meals...every week) and I am also extremely lazy and have no building skills what-so-ever!

Each house that we are building costs just less than £500 and it is estimated that we will build around 2 houses each during the time that we are there.  In order for us to buy all of the building materials for the houses, we have each committed to raising £1000.  

This is extremely out of character for me as most people think I am  a self-centred, selfish and arragant person, but I am doing this to prove that I am not! I think this is a massively worthwhile thing to be doing and although my missus is very unhappy that I am risking my life by exposing myself to Rabes, Malaria, Yellow Fever etc, I am fully committed to raising some money for these unfortunate children and giving my time to help them build a future! I have seen the absolute hell that these people live in and believe me, it really is diabolical.  Everybody says that don't they?  I really don't know the best way to convince people to donate to this cause and to be quite honest I don't really have a huge amount of experience in these charitable things myself.  I have always given a few pounds here and there and thought that I have done my bit.  Having seen what some other people have raised and achieved, and having seen Amoria Bond's plans to rehouse over 100 families through sheer good will and the desire to improve some impoverished families' lives, I have had quite a sobering wake-up call.  At the risk of starting to sound like a hippie I'll leave it at that but please do take a moment to look at the videos and pictures on how these people live.  Put yourself in their shoes, it isn't great.

For those more pragmatic people who haven't been swayed by my emotional and, to be quite frank, genius rhetoric - here are a few unique selling points of this particular cause.  Hopefully these will convince you to donate as much as possible:

 1.  When you give money to most charities (not sure if I can drop names without risking a law suit but you know the famous ones...), a huge portion of that money (around 90%) goes into administration costs for the fundraising activities.  That means if you give £10 to one of them, only around £1 actually reaches the people that you are aiming to help.

 

2.  Project Peru and in particular the Amoria Bond chapter of Project Peru will ensure that 100% of your donation will go straight into helping these people.  Amoria Bond will cover all of the administration costs and we are paying for our own accomodation and travel out there.  EVERYTHING you donate will go into improving these people's lives.  Giving £10 to this cause is the equivalent of giving £100 to one of the more media focussed ones.  Similarly, for those of you who are feeling generous, donating £100 is the equivalent of donating £1000 to a charity with massive overheads.  I could go on...

 

3.  Gift aid - I did, in fact, lie in point 2.  If you give £100 to this and you tick 'gift aid', then even more money will go straight to these people.  Brilliant!

 

4.  Amoria Bond has promised to rehouse 100 families.  This project will carry on for a number of years until we have dramatically improved the standard of living out there.  We aren't doing a get in, get on, get off project.  We are going to continue until Project Peru has become a roaring success and these people are no longer dying of unnecessary illnesses and are no longer watching their children suffer.

 

5.  A video is going to be made and that means you get to see me building a house...comedy value?  Must be worth some form of donation right?

 

6.  Any donations of over £100 will receive a reward of some sort.  Not worked this one out yet but it seems justified doesn't it?

 

I'm sure I'll come up with some more points over the next couple of weeks but in the meantime if you have any questions about the Project Peru or about how to donate or just to suggest more ways for me to raise money, please please please don't hesitate to get in touch.  You can donate to this fantastic cause by visiting www.justgiving.com/Adam-Standley/. and clicking the 'donate now' button.  Please forward this on to anybody that you know who you think might be interested.

 

Loads of Love

Adam