raycollins

This Easter we were delighted to host 50 local deserving residents.

Each enjoyed a fantastic Roast Beef dinner with all the trimmings, two cakes for dessert’s, tea, coffee, and non-alcoholic alternatives, plus they all took home two stunning cupcakes and two Easter eggs each. Five meals were delivered to guests unable to attend.

The guests were also treated to a wonderful music performance by Howard Hill playing some well know old tunes.

Fifteen lucky guests took home the wonderful table flower decorations.

All the guests were blown away when they found out the flower pots were painted and provided with the Easter cards handmade by the students at Millbrook Primary School.

On Good Friday fourteen volunteers delivered over 200 Easter eggs to local deserving families.

Fifteen volunteers turned up at the Down To Earth Cafe @ The Old Stables Stirling’s Close to set up for the elderly & vulnerable dinner guests.

A massive thank you for the beautiful flower decorations by Charlton Park Garden Centre Sarah Varney, flower pots painted and decorated by students from Millbrook Primary School, crockery and cutlery supplied by King Alfred’s Academy plus chocolate treats from Waitrose Wantage, and Easter eggs from Sainsbury’s Wantage.

Thank you also to Wates Construction for their Easter egg donations, wonderful cupcakes from Liane @L&S Cupcakes, and Kate owner of Down to Earth Cafe for allowing us to use her premises, a truly fantastic community effort for our lovely guests to enjoy a wonderful day.

It had been a long and tiring weekend but all the Trustees and volunteers were happy to have helped 275 people enjoy a fantastic Easter.

Another year over, another year helping our community.

Together with our army of volunteers, we have achieved so much again this year spending over £55,000 helping our community.

• St George’s Day Market
• Easter Lunch for over 65s
• 500 Easter Eggs for 97 families and 50 over 65s
• Wantage Carnival
• Family Coach trip Cotswold Wildlife Pk
• Family Coach Trip to Southsea
• Numerous household goods to needy residents
• Safety Bed for a 10yr old boy with autism
• Wantage Food & Drink Festival
• Marshaling all Newbury St Practices Covid and Flu clinics
• Setup Energy Support Fund
• Marshaled Dickensian Evening
• Christmas Day Dinner
• 150 Christmas Hampers

All the Trustees would like to thank everyone who has contributed to us this year either with their valuable time or money. We can only do what we do with your support.

On New Year’s Eve, the whole world celebrates the fact that a date changes.

Let us celebrate the dates on which we change the world.

We look forward to working alongside our wonderful volunteers, supporters, and sponsors again next year enabling us to keep helping our community in 2023 as we continue making a real difference in our community.

Peace, love, and good health to you all.

Ray

For Christmas this year, we hosted our annual TRCCT Christmas Day Dinner at Down to Earth Cafe space in Wantage. Our guests had a fantastic time, and I think you’ll agree the pictures speak for themselves. As always we were delighted to be able to put on such a great event, with thanks for the ongoing support and donations received throughout the year.

We have lots of people to thank for all of their hard work….

Massive thank you to Phil & Hazel, Sarah & Julie at Charlton Park Garden Centre for the amazing Christmas table decorations. The guests absolutely loved them.

Thank you so much to Louise, Brett, Phillip, Viv, Will, Jo (her daughter & Friend) Hugh, Allyson, Lisa, and Tom for such a superb effort in just over an hour, to set up and get the space ready for Christmas! This included laying the tables, setting up the chair covers and bows, and setting up the free prize draw prizes ready to surprise our guests.

Thank you, King Alfred’s School, for loaning us the crockery and cutlery.

Thank you, Carl, for collecting our wonderful table decorations from Charlton Park Garden Centre.

A massive thank you to Melanie Breakspear, Castel Fairlie, Di Slatter, Kate Farrington, and Rob White for prepping and cooking a beautiful meal.

Thank you to Carl Nennstiel Giles Roddy Bedford, Phil, Mandy, Will Harvey (minibus) John Durban, Jasyn and Geoff Corker for driving.

Thanks to Jim Mitchell for the Christmas sing-along. Amazing work by Jo, Chloe, Livvy, Zachary, Will Harvey, Gareth, Hugh, Phil, Viv, Jason for all their hard work during the day and clearing up at the end.

Thank you also to the Oxford Mail for our feature in the local news! Details below:

https://www.oxfordmail.co.uk/news/23220223.ray-collins-charitable-trust-provide-hampers-dinner/?fbclid=IwAR3kF1vFsrV6hwo-3BSoUtP1fBQwYZ6noeNw8_bICcksNmeMrNsJi4iFEHY

and finally…. thanks to anybody we haven’t mentioned above, who has provided their time in planning, preparation, or organisation for the delay, and to those who work tirelessly with us throughout the year, without you – events like this wouldn’t be possible.

What an amazing team and community effort this has been again this year!

Fantastic Day Trip to Southsea today with 12 families including 33 children.

The Trust paid for the coach and lunch including the driver. A great day was had by all!

A huge thank you to everyone who continues to support us. Your generosity enables us to keep making a real difference in our community, especially in these financially challenging times.

The Ray Collins Charitable Trust honoured by Her Majesty the Queen

The Ray Collins Charitable Trust has been awarded the Queen’s Award for Voluntary Service – the “MBE of the Voluntary Groups” – the highest award in the voluntary sector in the UK. The award aims to recognise outstanding work by volunteer groups that benefit their local communities.

In addition to the award the Trust have also received special recognition for our exceptional COVID response over the last fifteen months.  The Lord Lieutenant of Oxfordshire will present the Trust with a Certificate from Her Majesty the Queen along with a Crystal dome, with the extra engraving ‘with special recognition- COVID 19’ and specially commissioned pin badges. Two representatives of the Trust will also be invited to a Royal Garden Party in 2022.

Only registered as a Charitable Trust five and a half years ago, the Trustees were surprised by our nomination and left speechless when we received the news, we had been awarded such a prestigious award. The award reflects the positive impact we have had on our local community, especially during COVID, and through our normal charity activities; such as The Wantage Carnival, Christmas and Easter Day dinners for elderly and vulnerable adults, day trips for those living in isolation and disadvantaged families, supplying emergency appliances to those in need, supporting seriously ill and or seriously injured people of all ages.

The Trust continues to work with over 60 local organisations, businesses, schools, County, District, Town and Parish councils, charities, churches and registered community groups and has 170 volunteers who signed up and rose to the ever-changing challenges and dangers of Covid in our community.

During the last fifteen months the Trust raised £135,000, spending over £40,000 on shopping for families, supplying 1000 meals on wheels and 500 slices of cake for elderly people shielding, £12,000 on emergency electrical appliances & furniture for families hit financially or because of domestic abuse. We also donated £7,000 worth of goods and treats to all the local care homes, £1,700 on chocolate hampers for 60 local young carers, at Christmas spent £7,000 on hampers, £2131 on two Easter dinners and Christmas dinners for (70 each time) adults living in isolation and supplied 169 laptops to 7 local primary schools and King Alfred’s Academy costing £30,000 (a further 28 were supplied by a sponsor, £5,000 paid directly to King Alfred’s).

This award recognises the incredible efforts of all our volunteers who were out in all weathers shopping, delivering meals, delivering prescriptions, marshalling Flu Clinics before Christmas and every COVID vaccine clinic since January. We have played a small part in the delivery of over 20,000 vaccination jabs by the awesome clinicians at Newbury St and Church St practices at Mably Way Health Centre.  Usually, our volunteers give around 550 hours of their time a year for the trust, between March 2020- March 2021 this had risen to over 7500 hours and is still rising.

Ray Collins the Chair of the Trustees said “This a huge honour for everyone involved with charity, to receive national recognition from Her Majesty the Queen for our local charity highlights the variety and breadth of the incredible work we have done in our community over five years, hopefully this award will enable us to grow and help even more local people in ways we could never have imagined.

A massive thank you to all our volunteers including the COVID response management group who all volunteered and to my Trustees who are also all volunteers. Unity of passion and compassion is a rare gift, but it shines through in all our volunteers. They do their job with both, and that makes them genuine and dedicated volunteers, the best of the best. Our volunteers went above and beyond time and again.

Thank you all so very much for your tireless support, because of you over 2,500 people were kept safe and reassured with food, medication, kindness and compassion.

We are making a real difference in our community by encouraging local people to help local people, it doesn’t get any better than that”

Kind Regards

Ray Collins

Ray Collins BCA

Chairman

June 2021.

Registered charity number 1173358.

As part of our continued efforts to provide support within the local community, we kicked off Christmas with our annual collections for the Ray Collins Charitable Trust hampers. We were overwhelmed, again, with the generosity from all of the local businesses and the wider community who helped, collected and donated items into our trolleys that were located in Sainsburys, Wantage.

We started our collections back in November and by the middle of December we had nearly all of the items that we required to pack our hampers. The Challow & Childrey Cricket Club kindly allowed us to store and pack the hampers, where we counted and packed everything from Rice and Pasta to Chocolate and Coffee! Any items that we hadn’t managed to collect, the trust were able to purchase as a result of our other fundraising events across the year.

With the help from our fantastic supporters, volunteers and the local police force, we were able to deliver hampers to our local residents in time for Christmas!!

Thank you to everyone who was able to contribute, together we are “Making a real difference in our community!”

On Thursday 9th August local charity The Ray Collins Charitable Trust organised a seaside trip for twenty families from the Wantage area. Trustees Ray, Laura and Mel took 20 families including 50 very excited children with ages ranging from a few months to 17 to Southsea for a great day out.

Most of the families won’t have a holiday this year. Some have never had a holiday. Some of the children have never seen the sea.

The Trust hired a fantastic luxury 85-seat coach for £600 from Heyfordian Coaches, and arranged lunch for everyone at Mozzarella Joe’s Cafe, spending £670.

Fish and chips, pizza and chips or hotdog and chips, a drink and ice cream was enjoyed by all. The Trust organised vouchers so the families could eat when they liked and the cafe didn’t get overwhelmed. The food, portions and service were fantastic and we would highly recommend Mozzarella Joe’s if you are ever in Southsea.

“Oh, WOW!”

The families spent a lovely day together, having fun and making memories.

Some went for a dip as soon as they arrived and the water was surprisingly warm. Others toured the arcades, sat on the beach, played crazy golf and enjoyed the Funfair rides.

One young lad asked Ray, “Is that really the sea?”
When Ray replied “Yes”, the boy shrieked “Oh WOW!”

“What a fantastic seaside trip we had,” said Ray Collins afterwards. “I think the trustees had as much fun as the families.”

“Last year we took the families to Cotswold Wildlife Park. And whilst walking around I asked the children where they would like to go this year. Several children asked to go to the seaside, as they had never seen the sea. Which really surprised and saddened me.”

“So we decided there and then a seaside trip was definitely happening this year. I don’t think it matters how old or young you are. There is always something magical about going to the seaside. Add in fish and chips, and you have the perfect day.”