School uniforms are compulsory in Ghana. Your donations help to pay for the 'tea and bread' fabric, and because each uniform is hand made, you are also creating employment opportunities and supporting the local economy. Sandals and backpacks are also provided for each child

Melvyn's 70 miles at 70 Challenge Run from
 New Year's Morning to 31 January 2021 

FINAL UPDATE:  Thursday 13 May 2021

Pensioner Melvyn Walmsley (seen above running  a sponsored 10km race for this charity in March 2019) was 70 on 4 December. His fundraising challenge was to run 70 miles in a month  from his Sussex home on a measured 1.3 miles anticlockwise urban lap.

   Since September he'd been training to  build up his fitness. By mid November he'd managed to run 18.2 miles (14 laps) in a week - for the first time in 31 years! - so he was on target for 70 miles in a month. 

    In 2020 it cost Lovey Foundation (UK) just over £70 to equip each child it supported into Bawku primary schools. So Melvyn aimed to raise £70 for each of the 70 miles he'd run in January- a child's life changed per mile.

   He sayid, "Please sponsor me to help Ghanaian children who dream of going to school instead of child labouring. I'm so lucky to be still fit enough to do this."

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TO SPONSOR MELVYN, donors were asked to visit his secure online sponsorship page and, if you they were  UK taxpayers, to choose the option there to Gift Aid your donation, which would mean that our charity could receive up to an extra 25% on top of their donation. (They could also opt to have their names shown on that page as "Anonymous"). This was the link to Melvyn's  PeoplesFundraising.com sponsorship page:

https://www.peoplesfundraising.com/fundraising/70-70run

Alternatively, donors could sponsor Melvyn by sending us a cheque; if so,

First, if they were  UK taxpayers, they were asked to download, print out and complete our own Lovey Foundation Gift Aid declaration form (which they would not have to do again if they donated to this charity in future) by clicking on this link:
download Gift Aid Declaration pdf

They were asked to post their cheques - made payable to Lovey Foundation (UK) and marked on the reverse "70-70 run" - and their completed Gift Aid declaration form, if they were a UK taxpayer, to:

Lovey Foundation (UK)

Flat 4 Francislea

Colwell Road

Haywards Heath

RH16 4EL
 

THANK YOU!

PROGRESS BY

Tuesday 30 March 2021

Though Melvyn's running is now complete (and so the first sections of this blog have not been updated after 30 January) the final section below, SPONSORSHIP TARGET, reporting on the donations kindly made online and offline, will be updated every day until the NEW date of 31 March, when Melvyn's January 2021 70-70 run PeoplesFundraising.com online sponsorship page will be closed

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70 MILES NOW RUN AND 10 MORE ADDED AS A BIG THANK YOU TO THOSE OF YOU WHO HAVE SPONSORED ME SO FAR AND TO THOSE OF YOU WHO WILL HAVE BEFORE 15 MARCH!

On Wednesday 27 January, BACK TO RUNNING after taking an Arctic break to avoid further professional fouls and injuries that might come my way from the "grazes your knees" Invisible Iceman, I ran 4 laps (5.2 miles) which brought the month's total to 70.2. But I was out again today (as yesterday) in overcast, damp but fairly mild  conditions to add on 4 more laps (5.2 miles) in an age-related passable time of 56.5 minutes (half a minute faster than on Wednesday) as my last run in January to take me past 80 miles. Those last 10 bonus miles have been dedicated to my wonderfully generous sponsors and to those grateful Ghanaian children, to whom education is so very precious. They long to be able to go to school, and you sponsors are making that dream come true for many.                          THANK YOU!

FINAL RUNNING  TOTAL   
Saturday 30 JANUARY 2021

Miles run: 80.6 in 30 days, which have taken me 14 hrs 49.5 mins. (For comparison, my only marathon, aged 38, took me 3 hours 9 minutes, when the term "running" applied to me didn't breach the Trades Description Act 1968)

As promised, to thank all my amazing sponsors, I have continued until today, my last running day in January (since my weekly rest day falls on Sunday 31st).

Injuries: 6 January @ 3.30pm: nothing too serious but still disruptive: setting off, slipped on black ice on a tarmac slope very close to home: grazing to palms, knees and elbow & ripped tracksuit bottom, so needed to allow healing before setting out again. (Restarted on 11 January.) Wounds almost healed now.

Runner's morale bulletin: that slip at the start of Wednesday 6th's (abandoned) run was only a temporary setback, which cost me four days out of my schedule. There's TREMENDOUS ENCOURAGEMENT STILL from my generous sponsors. Today one more Gift Aided cheque was delivered by hand, a further online Gift Aided donation was received on my sponsorship page and 2 more run-related gifts identified from this website's Donate button (making 6of those so far, 4 with Gift Aid added: these have added £152.50 including £22.50 in Gift Aid.

All this follows a generous illustrated page 1  intro and page 3 feature in The Argus on Monday 25 January, after Friday 22nd's very effective ITV Meridian News two-minute piece at 6pm, beautifully filmed, constructed and edited by their reporter and correspondent Malcolm Shaw, had helped us to exceed our £4,900 target by 2%. By today, with further screenings of the feature elsewhere in the ITV Meridian region on 28 January the funds raised have reached 44% over the target and I have been given further sponsorship pledges. In the Mid Sussex Times on 14 January, page 37, there was a story "70-year-old man's 70 mile run for charity" complete with a photo of me on my last Lovey sponsored run, in Ghanaian school uniform.  And the wonderful Haywards Heath Harriers have now featured this appeal on their members' Facebook page, with a link to my sponsorship page -  THANK YOU, the Middy, ITV Meridian TV, The Argus and the runners who belong to the Haywards Heath Harriers!

We've now raised  144% of my £4,900 target (130% yesterday - up from 47% 13 days ago). That's already enough, at last year's costs, to equip approximately 101 children to go to school, of whom 15 will have been funded by Gift Aid. (Just 13 days ago there was enough to equip only 32 children.)

* These figures include 8 donations, made using the Donate button on this website, which we now know, from the comments left by the donors, were to sponsor Melvyn's 70 miles run

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

SPONSORSHIP   TARGET  
£4,900

KIND ONLINE DONATIONS SO FAR: 132*,
totalling £5,293 (incl. £952.75 Gift Aid).

47 EQUALLY KIND OFFLINE DONATIONS -  46 cheques and a CAF voucher so far (29 of the cheques Gift Aided): for £2,850 + 
£413.75 Gift Aid = £3,263.75 (The sum of £2,850 excludes the CAF voucher, which is being exchanged for a cheque.)

So on Tuesday 30 Marchthe

  GRAND TOTAL is
                                       £8,557.50**
 (incl. £1,366.50 Gift Aid)

This is so far 175% of the £4,900 target and, IF the costs of the goods we supply, including transport etc, remain the same as in 2020, this will enable about 120 children to be equipped to start at primary school!

* These figures include 8 donations, made using the Donate button on this website, which we now know, from the comments made by the donors, were to sponsor Melvyn's 70 miles run

** The Grand Total shown is BEFORE the deduction of the 132 online transaction charges by the third party online sponsorship page and Donate button providers. Lovey Foundation (UK) receives its online donations AFTER these charges have been deducted.

    THANK YOU, SPONSORS!

As "The Voice", Frank Sinatra, sang,
It's June in March already when you sponsor me or something similar:
Leo Robin's lyrics (1934) were "It's June in January because I'm in love", but that was  86 years ago. (And the lyrics have been further updated because we are now post-January, and June is getting even nearer. )

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THE SPONSORSHIP PAGE WAS CLOSED ON 31 MARCH 2021 (a four weeks extension on the original closing date of 28 February because more sponsorship was still being received in late March)

'Words and Music for Candlemas'
Free Afternoon Concert
Saturday 1 February 2020
Church of the Good Shepherd
272 Dyke Road, Brighton

We were very grateful to be able to give a second concert at this beautiful venue.
   We enjoyed one of the great JS Bach's most celebrated Sacred Cantatas - Ich Habe Genug - beautifully and movingly performed by Sussex mezzo soprano Janet Ormerod with an ensemble of very talented local instrumentalists. There was a large and very appreciative audience, who had a welcome bonus - a new poem specially commissioned to match Bach's theme for this occasion and read to us by its author, Colin Willcox.
   The tea, coffee and cakes served afterwards also went down very well; we heard more about the great work of the Lovey Foundation in Bawku, north eastern Ghana, and there was an opportunity to buy copies of the  Foundation's first paperback book,
The Quarry Girl, by its founder,
Aruk Thomas Lateef - a bargain at £5.*

   Copies of his poetry books , kindly donated by our guest poet Colin, were also snapped up very quickly to swell the funds we raised. 

* THE QUARRY GIRL: COPIES STILL AVAILABLE IN THE UK (AUGUST 2022)

If you would like to buy a copy of this A5 illustrated book @£6.50p inclusive of p&p costs (to dispatch to an address in the UK only), please send us your name and full postal address and enclose a cheque for £6.50p made payable to:
Lovey Foundation (UK)

and marked on the reverse
"The Quarry Girl" to:

Lovey Foundation (UK)

Flat 4 Francislea

Colwell Road

Haywards Heath

RH16 4EL

and a copy will be posted to you as soon as possible.

'A Lover and his Lass'
Songs and Arias for a
Spring Afternoon
Sunday 28 April 2019

 A large audience enjoyed a wonderful concert, complete with free home made cake and tea or coffee,  at the lovely Church of the Good Shepherd, Dyke Road, Brighton. Four popular local musicians - sopranos Katherine Nicholas and Eva Rustige, mezzo soprano
  Janet Ormerod and pianist Joe Ward - presented a varied programme of operatic arias and songs from around the world.
There was a prize raffle and the very successful UK launch of our first book, The Quarry Girl, written by Lovey's Ghanaian founder,
Aruk Thomas Lateef.

Based on a true story, this tells, in her own words, how a child labourer was enabled by the Foundation to become, instead, a senior high school student.