Many of you know that I work for Caring in Bristol and lots of you have supported this sweaty effort in the past (I don't mean that I am a sweaty effort, I mean the run is a sweaty effort...).  Now, more than ever, we need your support.  In the past year we've developed our work and are now running a Night shelter for 15 people every night in Bristol (we've called it the 365 Shelter).  We're doing this in partnership with St Mungos Outreach Team and the Quakers - trying to give safe basic shelter for people who are sleeping out, staffed every night by two amazing volunteers from a growing pool of people who want to help.

As well as that we are running Bristol Nightstop, our Christmas Shelter, a pilot short term supported lodgings project for young people, research and conferences, a growing project and a project supporting homeless dog owners.  Its pretty busy.

We need to raise a significant amount of cash over this next year to do all of this work and importantly keep the 365 shelter open and to pay for the staff and infrastructure to coordinate our volunteers.  And of course there are the other costs of running a charity which is now approaching 8 members of staff and hundreds of volunteers.

The money that you donate will be treated as unrestricted donations and will go towards the running costs of the projects that we run as well as the core costs of the charity.

I've increased the target this year because I know that you are amazing and that you will dig deep and not complain that I keep asking:-)

Onwards and Upwards

Matt