⁉️ The question we’re all asking… ⁉️
Was all that walking in the rain back in May worth it?! 🌧
The short answer: YES! 🎊 Together we raised over £2000 🎊
A total of 17 SFAC Superstars (including a duo and a team, lots of extra cheerleaders and 5 🐕) have walked over 1000 collective miles (that’s further than the length of the UK!) in support of SFAC’s work strengthening children and families during #MileADayMay4SFAC
In our our eyes that’s a big win!
We want to say a HUGE thank you 🤝 to everyone who has participated, shared our links and donated
(You can see some of them in the gallery below!)
because every penny you’ve raised and donated can be spent educating, equipping and empowering adults who care for children in families and communities globally 🌏 so they can THRIVE!
WE DID IT! YOU DID IT! And we can’t thank you enough!
We’re already planning for next year’s Miles in May challenge and we’ve made some very exciting upgrades! Think you might be interested in participating?? Leave your name and email address in this form and you’ll be the first to know what’s happening and when.
A Mile A Day in May
Our committed walkers (the humans and the furry friends!) battled all weathers to raise funds for us this May.
Recent Hightlights…
A highlight from the last few months has been receiving some really encouraging feedback from some of the organisations we’ve been working with including this comment from the team at The Life Foundation in Romania.
“Really one of the best things we could have done for our charity.”
The lovely team at Global Child Advocates also had this to say on their social media:
Sometimes wanting to do the right thing isn’t quite enough…you just need to bring in an expert. You know what we mean, the person who can come in and make quick sense of the confusion and competing information and confidently recommend a clear path forward.
That is who our friends at SFAC are. Between 2019-2020, SFAC helped 32 orgs in 18 countries. While we’ve given you lots of numbers this month, we really can’t begin to give you concrete numbers of impact on this one. We can safely estimate that those orgs will collectively affect thousands, if not millions of children. We’ll be counting that impact for years and years to come!
As Frederick Douglass once wisely said, “it is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men.” SFAC is building strong children every day as they strengthen families. Their kind and generous expertise is needed now more than ever. Help us build strong children together.
Here’s what some of our work has involved recently:
Every quarter Caitlin runs two 
PBs Power Hour sessions (there have to be two to cover all the different timezones! 
) for a similar purpose.
These sessions are open to anyone who has done a Protective Behaviours (PBs) Foundation course through SFAC and are a chance to talk about cases, learn from the work of others working in the care and protection of children, and to dive deeper into how PBs can be applied with the people they work with, their colleagues and in their personal lives to prevent burnout.
The Foundation Course packs a huge amount of information into its 12 hours of training. Expecting anyone to be able to remember and apply it all immediately is unrealistic so the Power Hours are just one way we are working hard to ensure everyone we work with can get the most out of their training.
The generosity of our donors mean we can offer them completely free of charge and, as these photos suggest, they’re often a lot of fun!
A big shoutout to Enzygo for supporting our first PBs Foundation Course and allowing us to offer several full and partial scholarships!
Want to know more about our PBs courses? 
Drop us an email at info@sfac.org.uk
Are you a morning person?!
It’s 6.30am and Dan. Is. Not. A. Morning. Person. 
But sometimes he’s up with the sun to meet across the timezones – this one was for a call to the Philippines!
The day before was another early one, this time to Australia. He was very ready for the weekend that week! 
Let us know in the comments which podcasts you think he (or any of our team) should be interviewed on next 
Mick Pease, our amazing founder, is becoming a serial podcast guest!
Mick recently spoke to Andy Roberts from ReVive, Brazil, about the challenges of shifting focus from institutional based care for vulnerable children to family care.
You can access the interview here.
If you have a listen we’d love to know what, if anything, intrigued or surprised you about what Mick had to say!
Worth a watch…
Hankies/tissues to the ready for this one…
{Content Warning: war, violence and family separation}
We encounter stories like this in our work all the time. All too often children are assumed to be “orphans” when in fact they have safe, loving parents who are ready and willing to care for them but circumstances and assumptions or lack of good social work assessments get in the way.
Better Care Network collated research suggesting around 80% of children living in orphanages have a living parent. In some countries that figure is over 90%.
If you support an orphanage financially or otherwise, it’s worth asking the organisation how many of the children have living parents or relatives who, with the right support and processes (you can’t just send a child home!), might be able to care for their child.
📝 Family is….. How would you complete the sentence?! 📝
❓ Wonderful❓ My safe place ❓ Complicated❓ Terrifying❓ Lonely❓ My rock❓ Fun❓ Confusing❓ Where I belong❓ Unsafe❓ Energising ❓ Exhausting
(Don’t be afraid to include an “AND” or two in there – Family is wonderful AND confusing” – those three little letters can be very powerful!)
It’s very easy in our line of work to paint family as the perfect solution, to highlight all the wonderful things that a family can be and do for both children and adults.
Of course, that is the vision we hold on to and work towards – that every child can grow up in a safe and loving family where they feel like they belong, that as adults we will be able to turn to our family for help and support and to celebrate wins and milestones.
But this is the real world and the real world is messy and complicated and so often joy and sorrow walk hand in hand.
So on International Day of Families and every day we’re walking gently in that tension.
Celebrating the vision of what families can be and joining in the joy of those whose experience of family is a loving, happy one whilst also acknowledging the many people for whom family is not a safe place and standing with those people in their pain, confusion and sadness.
What a challenge and a privilege.
If you feel able to today, take a moment to pause, to feel and to think about what the word and experience of family conjures up for you.
Be gentle with yourself as you do.
Reflections on International Day of Families
(May 15th)
Small business supporting a small charity!
🍪 During May, Cake is the answer raised £50 for SFAC through sales of their delicious baked goods!
🎊🎉🎈 THANK YOU! 🎈🎉🎊
(Hmm, maybe we should order some more to celebrate 🤔😆)
🍪 Here’s how that looks in numbers:
🍪 A total of 24 boxes (the furthest travelling by post to Wales!) containing 144 brownies and cookies, using 3.4kgs chocolate, 2.7kgs flour, 4.9kgs sugar and butter and 32 eggs, bought by brownie fans from all around the country!
🍪 UK friends, if you missed out this time round, never fear! We’ll be fundraising again in November with Kathryn Loftus’s delicious goodies.
Kathryn had this to say about her experience:
“I received my first big commercial order and expanded my customer base as a direct result of partnering with this amazing small charity!
From me, it’s important to be able to give something back but I didn’t expect that I’d also benefit by reaching a wider audience – everyone wins!
I’d certainly encourage other small business owners to support SFAC too”
Do you know a small business that might be interested in supporting SFAC? Our wonderful Fundraising Co-ordinator and biggest cheerleader, Hannah would love to hear from you. Drop her a line on info@sfac.org.uk
Birthday celebrations raise money for SFAC!
And to wrap up this month’s News in Brief there have been some birthday celebrations worth mentioning!
We’d love you to join us in celebrating our founder, Mick, who celebrated a milestone birthday back in June (if you want to be brave, you can guess which BIG birthday it is!).
Some of our team had the chance to get together in person for the first time in nearly 18 months on a few days before and with Mick’s birthday so close it was the perfect excuse for cake 🎂
(Don’t get too excited about our cake decorating abilities – this cute hedgehog was from a local supermarket. Some of our UK followers will know exactly which one 😆)
Happy Birthday, Mick! We are so grateful for all that you do and that we get to work alongside you.
🎊SFAC superstar alert! 🎊
Carmen also celebrated a *significant* birthday recently and decided to run the “Race to the King” across the South Downs (an area of rolling green hills in the south east of England), a total distance of 54 miles over two days! She also decided she’d like to donate her birthday funds to us.
And so, because of Carmen, and the generosity of everyone who knows her, we’re now £354 better off!
That’s more than double her initial target!! 🎯
We stand in awe of your awesomeness and we’re so grateful for your birthday gift, Carmen!
Thank you (times 354!) 😊
David Kinloch, one of our new trustees also raised over £300 for us by holding a birthday fundraiser on Facebook. What a way to start your time on the board, David – Thank you!!
We’ll be introducing you to David properly soon.
So that’s three Happy Birthdays and one very happy SFAC!
Happy Birthday!
