On a sunny first Festival Sunday, around 50 walkers took part in a sponsored event in aid of CLICK Rukiga, collecting and carrying water around Swakeleys Lake. Some were more skilled at this than others! St Giles’ attendee Caroline Chinondo, pictured here, is a nurse in the Harefield Hospital Transplant Unit, having moved to Ickenham ten years ago from Zimbabwe. Caroline made it look simple, but all the walkers would vouch for the fact that carrying your own water is tiring and time consuming work.
Over £1,000 raised by the walk will go towards CLICK Rukiga’s water provision project, as will a further £1,500 raised at the exhibition and auction event ‘Art for Rukiga’ which was advertised in May’s edition of ICN.
The CLICK Rukiga team would like to thank all the generous donors who gave their art work to sell, all who helped at the event, especially Greg Hall who was an excellent and entertaining auctioneer, those who attended the exhibition – and purchased the exhibits – as well as all the Festival walkers and sponsors. It all added up to two very successful events for this community link between Ickenham and our new friends in Uganda.
Thirty Scarecrows lined up for the Mayor’s inspection during the Festival Gala fete at Swakeleys. He thought they were all excellent but finally selected “Julian Van Gogh”, a very colourful artist, as the winner. Julian was made by a group of young people with disabilities, members of the K4Art group (funded by Karers4Kidz). The group meets every Wednesday after school at Abbotsfield. Their garden didn’t have a bird feeder, so the prize of a top quality feeder with fat balls, nuts and seeds was much welcomed by their teacher, Julia O’Sullivan. Mr Van Gogh is seen here chatting to the Mayoress.
We hope you enjoy the photos of the Festival in this special colour issue of ICN. More are available via the Festival Website at www.IckenhamFestival.org.uk. The Festival Team are keen to see the best of your photos too. Send them to photos@IckenhamFestival.org.uk with your name and contact details by 11th July. The best submission will win a bottle of ‘bubbly’ and the winner will be notified in the week beginning 14th July.
Receipt is acknowledged, with grateful thanks, for donations towards the cost of ICN, from:
Anon via David Thorpe, Anon via Ken Tombs, Ickenham Women’s Institute, Ickenham & Swakeleys Horticultural Society.
Please note that there is no edition of ICN in August. Copy for the September edition should be with the team by 12 noon on 13th August.
