This is very exciting time for Challengers as the 2008 expeditions are about to depart (and some of them have already left!). Getting everything ready is not an easy task but knowing that all you’ve been working towards for the last months is about to become true is quite a big motivation, isn’t it?

Challengers going on expedition in 2009 are also about to start a very exciting period as summer is always a great time for fundraising. Teams need to be ready to take on any challenge to raise funds for the expedition! There are plenty of ideas you can get from this newsletter and our expedition members’ website so go and have a look!

Read more about everything this issue has to offer!

• World Challenge embarks on a new adventure
• Check out our new money management section on the expedition members' website!
• Final preparation for expedition
• Find us on Facebook!
• World Challenge sponsors the Challenger Trust
  

World Challenge embarks on a new adventure…
We wanted to share the exciting new about our future at World Challenge with you. On 9th May 2008, TUI Travel PLC acquired World Challenge. Being part of the world’s largest travel company will offer our customers, employees and wider stakeholders excellent security combined with the very best quality and service they have come to expect from us.

Although this acquisition will change very little for World Challenge day to day, it will open up new opportunities for all our schools and Challengers and we look forward to working with them on the next phase of our exciting journey.

TUI Travel PLC is a leading international leisure travel group which operates in approximately 180 countries worldwide and serves more than 30 million customers in over 20 source markets. Headquartered in Crawley, near Gatwick airport in the UK, the Group employs approximately 48,000 people and operates a pan-European airline consisting of 155 aircraft. The company mainly serves the leisure travel consumer and is organised and managed through four business Sectors: Mainstream, Specialist & Emerging Markets, Activity and Online Destination Services.

To find out more about this acquisition, please visit the news section in our website.

For more information on the TUI Travel PLC – Student Travel and Adventure Group portfolio please visit the individual brand websites

Check out our new money management section on the expedition members’ website!
The Barclays’ team have been working really hard on refreshing the money management section of the expedition members’ website. It’s now live and ready to help you with your fundraising. You’ll find in there loads of ideas, advice on how to raise your money, organise your events and many sample letter, CVs and sponsorship forms!

The summer is one of the best periods for fundraising. There’s plenty of new projects you can have while people are on holidays and because you have lots more time to raise funds.

It’s fundraising time! What are you waiting for?

Final preparation for expedition!
During the last weekend of May, 494 Expedition Leaders, School Leaders and Expedition Assistants attended our final Expedition Preparation Conference at the Royal Grammar School in High Wycombe.
It proved to be an enjoyable day with sessions mainly focused on essential safety and procedural updates, group management, expedition budgeting and the World Challenge ethos for expedition delivery.

We also held another conference in April at Queen Margaret’s School in York which meant less time travelling for many of our northern based schools and Expedition Leaders.

Cotswold Outdoor were also present at both conferences, offering kit advice as well as a fantastic sale on some of their equipment and clothing.

We hope all those who attended left the conference feeling the excitement starting to build as the departure draws closer! If you still have any questions, please do contact either your Expedition or School Programme Manager

Find us on Facebook and become a World Challenge fan!

World Challenge is now on Facebook.

You can become a World Challenge fan and join more than 700 Challengers who are already in contact with each other on our page!

Come and ask for advice, tell us where you're going and how's your fundraising. You can also upload your pictures and videos and see other Challengers'.

World Challenge sponsors The Challenger Trust
For the past 10 years The Challenger Trust has been raising funds to provide outdoor education for young people from some of the most deprived areas of the UK, from inner city London Boroughs to former coal mining towns in the North East.

The Challenger Trust works very closely with World Challenge, which is one of their key sponsors as well as being its delivery partner for UK programmes.

This summer over 3,000 young people will take part in a Challenger Trust programme, more than double the number 2 years ago. They have been working hard to raise their profile in the youth sector and many of these programmes are run in partnership with organisations including the Big Lottery Fund, Young Enterprise, Children in Need and the Jack Petchey Foundation.

There have been significant changes in The Challenger Trust in the past year, based around new personnel and a big vision! And following World Challenge’s example, the Trust has also recently been through a re-brand, which was launched in May this year. A new website will follow shortly with their fantastic new look.

For more information about The Challenger Trust and how your school can be sponsored please email us at enquiries@challengertrust.org or call us at +44 (0)208 728 7356.

To download The Challenger Trust leaflet, please click here.

• “Fund”rising to the Challenge…

• Homewood School’s very successful money management
  • Refreshments at sports day
  • Donations from local companies
  • Parent consultation days
  • Bike race feed station fundraising
• Hints and tips in money management!
  • Lottery licences
  • Don’t let go!
  • Anything dangerous to you, your team mates or anyone else

“Fund”rising to the Challenge…

2008 was another great year for Challenger events…

Challengers raised £116,031 at our abseil events at the Bickleigh Viaduct in Plymouth, Bridge 75 in Buxton, the Tyne Bridge in Newcastle, the Falkirk Wheel in Scotland and the Hotel Europa in Belfast.

This year we introduced an abseil off the Guinness Tower in Dublin and Challengers raised 20,000€!

We organised 2 Challenger runs at Beaudesert Park in Cannock and the Alice Woodland Park in Farnham with 757 Challengers taking part. A fantastic total of £165,827 was raised through fundraising.

Challengers had a great day running 5, 10 or 15k with other members of their team – some Challengers took part carrying their expedition kit and many dressed up in fancy dress. This year we had smurfs, bees and lots of fairies taking part!

Please check the website in September when we launch the 2009 Challenger events. In the meantime do remember to check the money managements pages for ideas to boost your fundraising over the summer.

Homewood School’s very successful money management
Refreshments at sports day

One of our ideas that was thought to raise money for the group fund was to supply refreshments at our annual student sports day. Two stalls were placed at either end of the race track. We had many customers with runners and spectators buying drinks. The weather held out and remained sunny throughout the afternoon contributing many to buy our drinks. We were very pleased with our achievement raising over £100 in just one afternoon.

Written by: Ashleigh

Donations from local companies

We wrote a letter about us and what we were raising money for and sent it to hundreds of local companies. We had found all there addresses on the internet and had all been given a list of addresses to write out on envelopes in one off hour after school sessions. We heard back from a few of the companies. A local estate agent donated £200 and in return we are advertising their company on a board at the front of the school which states they are supporting World Challenge 2008.

Written by: Connor

Parent consultation days

With four annual parent consultation days where parents come in and meet their children’s teachers, we took the opportunity to try and make some money from these events. Teachers spend long days talking to parents as they come and go throughout the day. We set up a stall selling teas, coffees and cold drinks along with home made cakes. We managed to make on average just under £200 a day.

We also set up a second hand book stall with donated books from teachers which we sold along side the refreshment stall and again these were popular with parents.

Our school nurses made greeting cards for special events throughout the year and donated their profit to the team, they were sold to teachers and parents at consultation days.

Setting up refreshment stalls has allowed us to publicise World Challenge and our expedition to South Africa, we had special displays made with information about World Challenge, photos of our events and information on the school we will be visiting.

We also set up Cake stalls for special events such as Children in Need, Comic Relief and World Aids Day, where we contributed a percentage of the money we made to the charities and put a percentage into our group fund.

Written by: Martha

Bike race feed station fundraising

Picture a warm sunny day, polite cyclists looking for a drink and some food and Ian Wright popping in for a chat, sounds pleasant, doesn’t it? Well this is the exact opposite to what occurred on this ever baffling day. The group arrived at school at nine am with the understanding we were getting paid for manning a drinks and food station to pleasant cyclists, how this vision was wrong. As we arrived the heavens opened we should have all taken this as a sign and gone home, but the cyclists needed us so we pulled together as a team and batted through what was soon going to be an interesting day.

In order of bad events firstly we found out we were not getting paid, secondly we then found out the lorry with all the food and drink supplies on was stuck in a massive traffic jam an hour away. With the first cyclists half an hour away and all we could provide for them was water even though they had just cycled 100 miles, and still had another 100 miles to go this was not good news. As the first cyclists showed up their reaction was interesting shall we say, when you take into account that there are people in our team from the age of 14 up to 18, twenty full grown men sweaty and mad shouting and swearing at you can be intimidating and rude when it is not our team's fault but the organisers'.

Following this the lorry had still not arrived two hours later, and the main pack of cyclists was just an hour away scary stuff really, when so far we had only upset 50 cyclists. The surprise of the day was when Ian Wright showed up on his bike, to be fair to him he had just cycled a 100 miles but he wasn’t the most happy person as you can see in the picture were let him off for not smiling though as he was cycling for charity.

Hunting in a pack is the metaphor I would use to describe the scene as the main pack of cyclists and lorry arrived in perfect harmony. As the lorry driver slung the back door of the lorry up we had to fend the cyclists off as we unloaded the pallets, they were then torn open by the cyclists and it descended into a free for all. Some cyclists were pleasant and held a conversation; others were rude and obnoxious and complained about us not having more supplies on offer.

Once the carnage had descended we were left to clear up the mess, the hail stones and rain had mixed with the isotonic powder drinks to form a multicoloured stream down the coach park with pieces of malt loaf stuck to the pavement. Once finished returning school to its normal state we then reflected on they day and decided that not gaining any thing from this mysterious day was not acceptable. As a group we wrote a letter to the chief organisers explaining the ordeal we had been through and how we should not have to put up with it.

The organizers donated a cash amount of £200 and donated 5 mountain bikes which we have since auctioned and sold and we are very grateful of but my god we did earn them. This day was the first real challenging experience that our group faced and is the first day that I believe our group became a TEAM, which we have grown from since.

Written by: Callum

Hints and tips in money management!
Lottery licences
At World Challenge we want to make sure that our Challengers do not get in any trouble while they’re raising funds for their expeditions. You might be thinking about selling raffle tickets or running small lotteries, so please read the following text . This is only a summary of the Gambling Act to help you understand a little better what the law says. It does not cover the full extent of the Act so if you want to read the full text, please click here to go to the Gambling Commission website section about lotteries.

Here are some of the definitions that we extracted form their website.
The Gambling Act defines a lottery as an arrangement where people are required to pay to participate and that allocates, by a process that relies only on chance, one or more prizes.
A prize competition, on the other hand, is an arrangement in which the success depends, at least in part, on the exercise of skill, judgment or knowledge by the participants (and not of luck as in lotteries). However, if the participants pay to enter, this enters in the category of a lottery.

To be able to run a lottery, the organiser needs to apply for a licence at the gambling commission. Please make sure you don’t run a lottery unless you have a licence. There are details on the website about licence applications.
If you want to find out plenty of other money management ideas please visit our expedition members’ website.

Don’t let go!
Balloon releasing is frequently used for fundraising purposes or for celebrations. We agree the sight is quite impressive, but is the environmental impact really worth it?
According to the Marine Conservation Society, most of the balloons that are launched in the air will burst, but whole balloons and balloon pieces will float back down, causing problems for wildlife.

Balloon litter floating at sea is deadly for many marine wildlife species. Marine turtles and some seabirds are particularly at risk, as they feed on prey that floats at the surface. They may mistake floating balloons for their jellyfish prey and swallow them, or become entangled and drown. Once swallowed, a balloon may block the digestive tract and eventually lead to death by starvation.

Some whales, dolphins and fish are also known to have died as a result of eating balloons.
We would like to encourage our Challengers to find other ways of releasing balloons. The Marine Conservation Society has suggested a few alternatives to balloon releasing:

• Prize balloon popping - air fill your balloons, and hide a few prize tickets inside. Release the balloons indoors and have everyone pop them to find prizes.
• Guess the number of balloons - run a competition before the balloon-pop, the closest guess wins.
• Balloon art - hire a balloon artist or, for the big, bold statement, try a giant air-filled-balloon sculpture.
• Balloon relay - each member of a team has to run a short distance and sit on a balloon to pop it before running back to tag the next member of the team. The first team to pop all their balloons wins!
• Guess the number of balloons - why not fill a car with inflated balloons and run a competition to guess how many balloons are in the car. The nearest guess wins the prize.

Here are a few tips to enjoy balloons without harming wildlife:

• Don't let go of balloons outdoors
• Fill balloons with air rather than helium
• Use balloons made of natural rubber latex rather than mylar (foil) balloons
• When tying balloons, use natural cotton string rather than plastic ribbon
• Securely tie any balloons that are used outside
• Always hand tie balloons rather than using plastic valves

Anything dangerous to you, your team mates or anyone else
We always encourage our Challengers to get really creative with their fundraising. We also love receiving your money management ideas to see how much fun you had while raising funds for your expedition.
However, we don’t want you to take any risks. Some of our daredevil Challengers have taken quite a few challenges: abseiling during our organised events or even jumping from a plane. But all this has been done using extreme caution and without taking any risks of harming themselves, or the others.

Safety comes first at World Challenge and we aim for our Challengers to adopt that attitude as well.

Please ensure that anything you do, either performing, working or challenging yourself, is safe for you, your team mates and that this doesn’t incur any risks.

This year World Challenge will be launching a new project in one of our short haul destinations: Morocco. This will be an ongoing, sustainable project in one of the schools of the village Aremd. Two World Challenge teams will be working on the project this summer. One team from King Edward VI School, Southampton and another team from Robert Pattinson School.

There is enormous scope to greatly improve the school, making it an important centre of learning and sport for the local area. The project offers an important chance for cultural interaction as well as a variety of physical projects, such as replastering and painting. The project is supported by the school and the village association, meaning that World Challenge teams would be working with the aims of the local community.

The team from King Edward VI School, Southampton will be working on the sports room. The room is intended for PE and after school and community lessons, such as karate, stretching and indoor games. The main task is to convert the room into a multi-activity sports centre. Colourful, fun and bright murals of sports images, equipment and sporting tips will be painted around the room and Challengers will also bring along some sports posters to put on the walls.

The team from Robert Pattinson School will be working on the school’s library, which is currently empty. The team will paint colourful and fun murals in the library to make it more lively and attractive. The team will build shelving and furniture for the room. Future World Challenge teams will continue this task.

The school has around 180 pupils aged between 6 and 12 and caters for 287 pupils from the area. A sports room would enable the children to learn physical education but would also be an important room for collective activities, team games and sports lessons. The library would benefit from English books, pens and exercise books. The association of villagers from Armed will help with the development plans.

We wish both teams the best of luck in their expeditions this summer and are looking forward to seeing pictures of their finished projects when they come back. There’s plenty of potential for future projects in the school. If your team is interested, please contact us.