Media and PR

HI guys
 
Another fine Galway day here, and my garden is looking very flowery!  We had our media launch night in Montys of Kathmandu last Thursday, and it was a great night.  We had a guy called Finbarr O'Rourke, who is a photojounalist, who got funding from Irish Aid's Simon Cumbers Media Fund to go out to Nepal with another journalist, David O'Brien.  They met various women and children in Kathmandu, some of them homeless, addicted to drugs, and some working as prostitudes, who had come from the remote rural parts of the country like Humla, but ended up with extremely difficult lives in the capital city.  So Finbarr went through photos and the stories of some of the children and women he met.  I also spoke for a while about our work and what we do, so it was a good night and was well attended.
 
Irish Aid has also announced that they are reopening CSF, so we can apply for up to €200,000 of funding per year, for three years, so if we could get this in place, it would have a massive difference.  The closing date for application is 11th June, with decisions made in early September, and funds distributed in October.  So we will be working very hard between now and June to pull all this documentation together - it's a big job.  I will be out in Nepal from 5th to 29th of May, meeting the villagers and doing the detailed planning work with Nirmala for the next three years, subject to funding. 
 
Things are moving ahead with the ceili - I now have two US organisations who are putting together detailed proposals on how to count the crowd using technology / not a manual turnstile method, so I am hoping that I can get something into Guinness later today for provisional approval.  If so, we can then push the green buttons and get everything pulled together.  I have a team, but am reluctant to really charge ahead until we have the go-ahead in principal from Guinness, as this will be the first ever mass participation event that will use an aerial photo / non-manual method of verifying the crowd numbers, so we are breaking new ground here with Guinness!  Fingers crossed that we can get this over the line.
 
While everything is very positive overall, cash flow remains very tight.  We had a bag pack booked in Dunnes for three days this weekend, but discovered yesterday that there was a double booking, and we can't now go ahead, so this has put a dent into our finances this month.  I need to get funds out to Nepal for our volunteer centre this month, so it's difficult at the moment.  Everyone is working huge hours, but because we don't have any core recurring funding, every month we need to go out and raise a lot of money from scratch, which puts us under huge pressure.  Most charities have core funding from Irish Aid / the government, a few philantropists, and have a good chunk of direct debits coming in, so their other fundraising is the icing on the cake, so to speak.  We have to raise the butter, sugar, eggs and flour every month, so it's very hard work in the current market, when all our donors are so tight themselves for cash, and corporates are really struggling.  But my team continue to punch well above their weight, and we have a cultural night this Thursday in Galway in Aras na Gael with a big raffle, so hopefully we will get a good result, which will really help.  We haven't cut our programmes in Nepal, unlike most charities, so I am hoping that we can struggle through the next six weeks until our Ceili and flag day happens, which should raise significant funds.
 
So I hope everyone is keeping well out there, and chat to you next week!
 
Take care
Nicky