As you may already know, our 2017 Summer Flower Exhibition is based on the classic children’s novel ‘The Railway Children.  As you may remember, the family in the story make the most of their upturned life by showing vigilance, courage, kindness and embracing the community in which they soon become a welcome part of.  This brings us nicely onto our chosen charity for this year’s Summer Flower Exhibition.   We have chosen to support Smile International and their brand-new venture ‘Sow a Smile’.

Smile International is passionate about their FEED programmes (Feeding, Educating, Empowering and Developing) that are currently running in a number of countries and feeding nearly 2,000 people each school day.  Their new ‘Sow a Smile’ project is in Zimbabwe and aims to not only increase the number of people fed each day but to enable one of their schools to grow and harvest its own food in order to become self-sustainable for years to come.

The project will also mean more local employment and skills training opportunities, provision of a more nutritionally balanced diet and empowerment for the community.

So far, Smile International have already managed to complete several tasks on their ‘Sow a Smile’ project including:

• Install a well on the site to provide a sustainable supply of water.
• Sourced a potential taskforce.
• Sourced and in the process of testing crop seedlings.
• Mapped out the allocation of crops to land.

Smile International still have a number of tasks that need to completed which is where we can help.  Still to do:

• Cultivate the land and erect a 1.2m fence
• Install irrigation system and purchase seeds
• Hire staff and supply of pesticides
• Electricity, fertiliser and renovations to transport and fuel

Initial capital required = £6,050

Running costs per year = £5,500

How can we help?

They have the land, they have the people, they simply just need our help to get it off the ground.

Coolings are passionate about supporting community based projects and we think this is a fantastic cause.  All donations from this year’s Summer Flower Exhibition will be heading their way, so when you visit the exhibition any donations into our water well will be very gratefully received.  

If you are interested in supporting this project long term and want to help create smiles to last a lifetime, you may also be interested to know:

• £4 a month helps to sow a Smile by providing seeds
• £7 a month helps supply electricity and fertilizer
• £11 a month helps go towards transporting food to the local communities
• £15 a month helps support the supply of water and skills training

For more information about Smile International and the work they do or to set up a monthly donation please visit:  www.smileinternational.org

To find out about our Summer Flower Exhibition 2017 click here.