Birthday Bucks Scheme (UPDATE)

Hey guys! We wanted to give you guys an update on our Birthday Bucks Scheme.

The Birthday Bucks scheme ran from March until May and we had over 170 applications from all over the UK, which is amazing! 10 of our Rebels volunteered to choose their favourite 2 applications (2nd being a back-up in case the same application was chosen multiple times) of which we planned to fund the ‘top 10’.

This was a hard and heart-wrenching exercise for our Rebels. We acknowledged that for every great cause we could support, there were so many more we had to pass by this time, and that is tough. In the end we had a chat about our planned original £15k pot of money, managed to find some extra cash and decided to fund all of the 20 chosen applications! 

All of our Birthday Bucks winners have now been contacted. They were all thrilled and there were tears (and not just from us)! We also invited our winners and their families and friends to Rebel Fest 2022 to celebrate our 10th birthday with us in person! 

This is what our Birthday Bucks will be funding:

• A sit down bike for a war hero amputee
• A community space ‘youth club’ for 11 -18 year olds
• The conversion of a pick up truck and a cattle trailer into fitness ‘pods’ for use primarily by SEN children
• Supporting and improving a weekly food parcel scheme
• Improving the gardens of hospital houses, used by the families of babies in neonatal intensive care (NICU)
• Purchasing items for a furniture ‘bank’ to create furniture packages for newly housed families
• Purchasing gardening equipment for a local primary school's Gardening Club
• Purchasing a team football kit for a junior football club that currently play in black t-shirts
• Building a community-led indoor skate park
• Upgrading an all-weather performance area for use by poets, artists and musicians in the Welsh Valleys
• Creating a sensory garden for people with dementia
• Building work to make a primary school playground safe again
• Paying for expenses involved in the Welsh team participating in the World Butchery Challenge in America
• Paying for a range of trips over the Summer holidays for young people with additional learning needs, ASD, learning disabilities and associated physical disabilities
• Pet food for a pet food bank
• Purchasing a new kitchen and outdoor equipment for a scout group
• The setting up of a new mum and baby group in a community hub to remove post-covid isolation
• The evolution of a local Capoeira club
• Expenses associated with setting up and running of a community wellbeing circus group
• A wellbeing and mental health day for men in a community hit by welfare dependency, high unemployment, low educational attainment and poor mental health

We are super excited to help fund these causes and can’t wait to see the progress!

Thanks a million Rebels