Bricks into walls

Evening everyone,
Princess Blue at your service (if I had a cap I'd be doffing it right now. As it is I'll have to make do with twiddling my locks instead!) I was sitting here in my shiny lap top land and pondering the imagery of bricks and what they represent. If you're on twitter you may have seen my prayer request last night. (If you didn't and you 'do' talking to God, can you talk to Him about little baby Molly please? Ask Him for a miracle, she needs one - thank you x)

Anyway, we've always talked about Give A Brick (i.e. just 1!) to mean one pound but what if we took it to another dimension and talked about Bricks in terms of prayers? Maybe I'm just having a quiet profound moment but I'm wondering if there could be another side to Give A Brick? Could we also use Give A Brick to harness the power of prayer?

As much as a collection of literal bricks go together to build literal walls which in turn create whatever structure you've got planning permission for, what about individuals joining together to form a prayer wall?

So imagine something horribly desperate happens (because be honest, it's horrible desperate things that turn folks to prayer quickest isn't it?) What would it be like to know that you had somewhere to go to place your brick, knowing that others would join you?

The first thing I did after that phone call last night (after crying and praying and blubbing a bit more) was get online to get as many people as I possibly could also praying (and crying too but that was optional!) but having Googled 'Prayer Request' it felt a little like shooting in the dark!

I found one site where there were literally 157 pages of prayer requests. Each individual request had a little button that could be clicked which sent an automatic mini-email to the recipient of the prayer to let them know that someone had prayed for them. I sent them a message on little Molly's behalf and ended the evening with 5 replies telling me she'd been prayed for.

I had a lovely personal email from a gentleman in the US assuring me that he would be praying for little Molly and her family. That email brought tears to my eyes just to think of a stranger who never knew me or Molly or Molly's mum and dad and there he was talking to God on our behalf. Talk about humbling!

Could and should Give A Brick be a part of that? I'll leave that for you to ponder and pray over and Mr Trustees, if you read this, I'd be interested to hear what you gents think too.

Love,
The Blue Princess x

Give A Brick ... i.e. just 1!

Hi,
It's been a few weeks since either Blue or I posted here on the Give A Brick blog but behind the scenes, in between enjoying the beautiful sunshine (cue ironic raise of eyebrows) things have been quietly developing.

The biggest advancement is the preparation of a full scale onslaught into the world of marketing. This could get messy!

Have you ever heard any other charity beg it's supporters to only give one pound?! We don't think so but that's the premise behind the name Give A Brick. For our first project, a community centre for Cross Hands, to be finished before the red man does his rounds, all we need is 80,000 lovely people to give one pound. Given the population of Wales alone, that should be easy!

In fact, what's the population of Llanelli? Throw in the rest of Carmarthenshire just for good measure and we'll be laughing!

So if you get a letter from a friend telling you that he or she has given a brick and would you please do the same, I'm afraid you've got us to blame. You have been warned!
El xx

Eat, drink and raise money

Raise money for us simply by doing something you enjoy - having your friends round for dinner!

Just go to www.dinner4good.com/GiveABrick and you'll see it couldn't be easier to Host a Dinner.

You start by creating a personalised "Dinner Page" on the Dinner4Good website (takes about 5 minutes) and then email invitations will be automatically sent from the site. Your guests then accept and donate online, which means you can see who's coming and how much is being raised - in a click. It reduces the awkwardness of asking for money and no there's no hassle with collecting cash. Dinner4Good takes care of everything, including the Gift Aid application - so all you have to do is eat, drink and enjoy yourselves!

Tell your friends over dinner about GiveABrick and they might also want to hold a Dinner4Good of their own - so the good goes on and on!

Love,
The Blue Princess x

Twitter, MySpace and all things web ...

Good Evening :)
Just a very quick (and long overdue!) update. Things have been very busy behind the scenes in charity land. I'd hoped that 2009 would be the year that Blue and I finally got our acts together and updated this blog more regularly. But here we are, mid way through February and I haven't even wished you a "Happy New Year!" yet.

Ah well, better late than never! I trust that 2009 is living up to all you anticipated it would and that it finds you happy and healthy.

So on to news ... One of the more follicle challenged trustees of GAB suggested that we should, to put it in his own words, "harness the power of viral marketing!" That sounds clever I said. When would you like to start?

So this month sees me getting my pretty little toes wet (OK, so like yours they're neither pretty nor even that little but a girl can dream!) and holding Blue's hand as we try twittering. If you haven't Twittered yet, the BBC Breakfast programme described it as the next big thing (or similar) so I did as I was told and helped Blue start twittering.

It seems that she didn't need all that much help after all and can now, after just a handful of 'updates', she can count Stephen Fry as a 'follower' (yes, Mr Trustee, THAT Stephen Fry :)

So if you'd like to Twitter with us (or if you're brand new and want to start) join us here:

The Blue Princess on Twitter

As an aside, it seems that 'Give A Brick' the website builders are in action again. We've been commissioned by Myrddin Mortgages to update their site. Many thanks to Helen Thomas, director, manager and all round lovely lady :) I'll let you know when it's ready to be unveiled so you can stand by and 'ahhhh!' wildly.

Until the next time,
Eleanor x

P.S. Sorry for the inaccurate use of the phrase 'very quick update'. I got carried away!

This is a post so I can 'claim' my blog over at Technorati!

Ok, I'm not sure how long this post will have to remain but, this is a quick post to prove that I, The Blue Princess, am the author of this blog. I have to put a little piece of code in. It's here:

Technorati Profile

OK, and now I'm done!

Why? You might be wondering. OK, we at Give A Brick, and that includes my royal highness self, are experimenting with a few different online things such as Twitter, MySpace and Technorati.

Watch this space ...

Love,

The Blue Princess x

Give A Brick - the website builders!!

Evening :D
It seems that Give A Brick have found a new way to lend a hand and raise some money at the same time. Not content with building a pretty website for ourselves, I helped a lovely policeman called Owen. Why would a policeman need a website? To advertise his telephone number?!

But this policeman is moonlighting as an actor. Everyone knows that actors love talking about themselves and this one's no exception!

Seriously though, I put a lovely (OK, so I'm biased but he's pleased with it!) page together for him and asked if he'd Give A Brick (just 1 remember) in return. The generous gentleman gave a few more than just one (now that's just naughty, you know what I always say - Give A Brick, just 1!) so this post is a public "Thank you" and an offer of my services for anyone else out there who'd like a fabulous web presense in exchange for giving a brick and telling your friends.

Until the next time ...

Love,

The Blue Princess x

Why bother?

Sometimes I feel like I'm banging my pretty little head against the proverbial brick wall (no pun intended!) Back last Summer, it seemed like such a simple, captivating idea to ask everyone to give just one brick. But it turns out that 'everyone' is quite hard to get hold of!

It seemed I might have been somewhat naive in my belief that the media would love the idea of a charity that only wanted a pound. I thought they'd jump up and down with excitement when they saw our funky website.

Give A Brick's financial year runs from August so with half our year gone, one would expect us to be very close to having earned the £5000 we need to prove ourselves worthy of registered charitable status. Without it, we can't have an online donation facility which is why we rushed into registering when we did.

So are we nearly there yet?

Not really. So we need your help. If you haven't yet done so, please visit www.GiveABrick.com and click on the 'donate now' logo to Give A Brick. It'll only cost you a quid but what is more important (or at least as important) is that you please, please ask your friends to do the same.

So why bother Giving A Brick?

Give A Brick is a grant giving charity. We put lots of effort into asking everyone to Give A Brick and we then share the bricks out by giving them to projects that are helping the people we want to help.

Who do we want to help? Lots of people: Children, young people, elderly people and people who are struggling financially.

We Give Bricks to projects that are helping make life better for people (and very soon, if you Give A Brick online you can even help us chose which projects to support).

The first project is based in Cross Hands in South Wales. Cross Hands Christian Centre are saving up for an extension to the rear of the church. This will provide facilities for parent and toddler groups, lunch clubs for their older neighbours, after-school and holiday clubs and eventually, a pregnancy advisory service.

If you live in Cross Hands, you can probably see why you'd want to Give A Brick. If you live in Carmarthenshire or Swansea, you'd again probably feel like supporting a local charity. But if you live in Leeds or Rochdale or Coventry (for example) why should you bother Giving A Brick?

Give A Brick is about putting the fun back in to life for people who could do with a smile. We might not be pouring money into your community right now but if you ask us, we could.

It all starts with a single brick from you so please Give A Brick and then tell your friends.

Thanks :D