We hope to be seeing as many of you as possible on Saturday 11 September for our annual get together and fundraising event.

It will be located in and around the village of Braithwaite, near Keswick, with plenty of walk options available including the full Coledale Horseshoe.

We will be holding our evening event at the Braithwaite Institute, the village hall in Braithwaite. There will be dinner, drinks and plenty of opportunity to catch up with friends old and new. 

Registration will be £20 per person and an additional £25 per person if you would like to join us for dinner after the event. If you would like to attend, please complete our online registration form.

The 2021 Fundraising Weekend page on Just Giving is: https://www.justgiving.com/campaign/2021LED

If you’ve not already sorted out accommodation, please do!

While we aim to continue with our solar lighting distribution (and a huge thank you to those who participated in the individual Huayhuash Challenges in March and early April), we are specifically aiming at our September fundraiser to raise in the region of $10,000 USD to provide medical funding for the health posts we support in both Peru and Nepal.

We’ll give more updates as we progress towards September. In the meantime, stay safe and fingers crossed we can all gather in the Lakes on 11 September.

We hope to be seeing as many of you as possible on Saturday 11th September for our annual get together and fundraising event.

It will be located in and around the village of Braithwaite, near Keswick, with plenty of walk options available including the full Coledale horseshoe.

Registration details will be sent out shortly after the next Government announcement (expected around the third week of May), which is currently intended to update us all on the easing of restrictions around self-catering and holidaying options in the UK.

In the meantime we know a number of friends and supporters have sourced nearby accommodation which, given proximity to Keswick, is in fairly plentiful supply. We are hoping to have an evening event on the Saturday but cannot confirm a venue yet until we are able to travel ourselves and check venues out. We plan to have the evening do as close as possible to Brathwaite, if not in the village itself. 

The last year has necessarily seen LED shift focus in terms of what we do given the constraints of travel for Val and also the health issues in both Peru and Nepal. A lot of funds raised this year have been used to provide food to the communities we usually reach with our lighting, medical and educational supplies. Both Peru and Nepal have suffered a range of shortages and our friends on the ground in both countries have made fantastic efforts to get our support out to the villages that have needed it the most.

While we aim to continue with our solar lighting distribution (and a huge thank you to those who participated in the individual Huayhuash Challenges in March and early April), we are specifically aiming at our fundraiser event in September this year to raise in the region of $10,000 USD to provide medical funding for the health posts we support in both Peru and Nepal.

We’ll give more updates as we progress towards September on this. In the meantime, stay safe and fingers crossed we can all gather on the 11th September.

Our LED Blencathra Fundraising Challenge 2019 page on JustGiving closed earlier this week and the donations total is £5,904.90 plus £1,315.38 gift aid from 96 supporters!

In addition, we have some direct donations of £616 giving a grand total of:

£7836.28

Huge thanks to everyone who participated – walking, feeding, ferrying, donating! It was a great day.

LED’s Blencathra Fundraising Weekend 2019

To give you an idea of some of the things that this money enables us to do

Our solar lights cost around $55 each for Nepal (which is $45 plus approx $10 import duties) and $25-$38 in Peru (import duty can take the per light cost up to $38).

We try to supply a number of villages per year. Villages can range from 10 lights to well over 25 depending on size. Val mainly focuses on a specific valley or valleys each season in both Nepal and Peru and we’re getting to the stage now where are needing to start re-supplying as some original lights need mending or replacing.

For school supplies, the cost depends on the number of children and what they need, and again the cost varies in Peru and Nepal as we buy the supplies in Huaraz or Kathmandu to help the local economy.

In Quisuar it costs about £450 a year for the primary school and £70 for the secondary school as they generally only need pens and notebooks. When we supply the school in Jancopampa the cost is around £700 as it’s a bigger school. We try to fund supplies for both schools every year.

After the Trustees next Board meeting we’ll have a more detailed list of specific projects in mind for next year. Watch this space!

For updates on our projects, fundraising, treks and other activities, follow LED on Facebook/LEDCharity and Twitter/LEDCharity.

Donations always welcome via our LED JustGiving page.