1) A huge thank you for all the wonderful online donations this month and the cash donations over the last months that we collected today, amounting to £33, from Dover Road collection containers at the Post Office (£9), The Chippy (£1), The Blue Star (£3) Morrisons (£7), and Tinto Coffee (£13). We are saddened that Miriam from Tinto Coffee has now closed the shop. She has been an incredibly supportive inspiration and we have no doubt that she will be even more successful in her next enterprise.
We are also enormously grateful, this month, to the previously mentioned donors who include Wainhomes (£500), Redrow (£250), and some remarkable donations from some of the 500 plus local residents near to the wood whilst undertaking the MTC survey. Since last month we have moved from 68% to 73% towards our target fund with £6,379 further to go. We also have to give a special mention to our crowdfunding organisation – Spacehive who have not only waived their normal fees during this difficult period but have made the exceptional decision to allow some invaluable in-kind offers to be counted towards our funding target, with specific conditions. Consequently, we hope that next month we will be able to confirm some incredible offers of support.
We are still waiting for Green Sefton to confirm potential offers of mature trees as part of their post highways construction work in the local traffic junction. Further green improvements are proposed around the junction. We have also been given opportunities to remove various shrubs and trees from the proposed Aldi site, to be utilised in Bobby’s Wood and another park. Whilst the large black damaged litter bin will be replaced and stabilised. Finally, we received great news from the Tree Council who awarded our project a grant for the proposed hedging and wish to put us in contact with a professor who is interested in undertaking research to demonstrate the effectiveness of the hedging in reducing vehicle pollution.
2) Media wise we were fortunate to be on the front page of the local Aintree and Maghull Champion newspaper two months ago, but it has been difficult to submit further articles because they have temporarily combined all the areas in Sefton into North and South meaning that there is more competition for articles which have to have a generic interest outside Maghull. Nevertheless, we (1) attended a kind invitation from the Sefton Green Party to update them on our project. (2) attended and presented our business plan to Maghull Town Council (MTC, logo pictured) full meeting in June which was ratified in July in which they gave the project their unanimous full support, and confirmed the lease agreement. (3) MTC also commissioned a one-month survey to obtain feedback from the local community about our proposals resulting in knocking on doors with leaflets for the online survey, information sheet, question and answer sheet and hard copies for those who were unable or did not wish to use the Internet. The results will be made available in August. Within the survey we understand that 18 volunteers have kindly come forward to form a Friends of Bobby’s Wood Group, (4) Our John Travolta submission to the Lydiate and Maghull 2020 Scarecrow Festival which closes on 10 August, is another fun way to draw attention to our project.
Although we had already, within the current restrictions, made contact with every resident in Maghull through the front page of the Champion newspaper, the 10,000 strong Maghull Community Facebook Page, radio, posters and other mediums, meeting the local residents, was a really useful positive experience. However, it did mean less time for exploring funding options, which we will now refocus upon.
3) This month, we are still hoping to install, two large poster boards on site, two MTC litter bins, a scarecrow for the Lydiate and Maghull Scarecrow Festival, and feedback from the MTC survey pertaining to various aspects of our proposals. We will continue to explore funding options, at this difficult time, in the form of grants and donations from large companies this month.
Many thanks once again for all your brilliant help and please continue to spread the word about the project.