2024, New Year – The Future of Staffing at Adventure Ashram
I would firstly like to wish everyone a Happy New Year and thank you all for the support you gave Adventure Ashram in 2023. It has been a challenging couple of years, but we were pleased to finish our recent financial year (ending Oct 2023) in a better place, raising nearly £30k more than in the previous year.
Siobhan, our CEO, has decided to move onto pastures new and so will be leaving Adventure Ashram in February. Siobhan joined us as we were emerging from the pandemic and enthusiastically engaged with Adventure Ashram and the charities we support in India and beyond. Effectively doing two jobs in one since December 2022, she has overseen the charity during one of its most challenging periods, working far beyond her contracted hours, running and attending numerous fundraising events and managing to raise our income from relative doldrums in the preceding 2 years to a steadier state. On behalf of the Board, I would like to thank her for her dedication and hard work.
The Board and I are viewing this change as a good opportunity to restructure how Adventure Ashram operates, seeking to continue providing much needed funding for our charity partners in India. The sole reason we exist is to raise funds for organisations such as the Odanadi Seva Trust and Grace Charitable Trust, and it is our hope that we can continue to do so in the coming years at increased levels.
The New Year therefore introduces us to a new way of working for Adventure Ashram. We are recruiting for a part-time Charity Coordinator to oversee the organisation of our day-to-day work and important events such as the UK Car and Bike Rally. We are also going to be working with a talented fundraising freelancer to deliver project-based work such as our Yoga Stops Traffick campaign. The charity sector has continued to struggle post the COVID-19 pandemic and with the cost-of-living challenges everyone is facing. Charities, big and small, have struggled to return to previous year’s fundraising income and we are seeing closures, merging and cost-control measures put in place. Many charities are having to reconsider how they function, by restructuring our staff team and reducing operating costs, our hope is that we can continue to raise much needed funds into the future.
If you have any questions please do not hesitate to contact myself or another member of the board. In the meantime, please do be reassured we remain confident there is still a place for our small and mighty charity – and most importantly, there remains a huge need for the funding we raise each year. It is also an exciting and special year ahead, with the 10th anniversary of our UK Car and Bike Rally taking place in May. We hope we will therefore have your continued support, for which we give much thanks.
Best regards,
Colin Taylor, Chair
On behalf of the Adventure Ashram Trustee Board:
Udesh Naidoo, Margaret Ring, Feryal Bensalah, Roy Clark, Mark Edwards, Kathryn Baldacchino and Craig Jarvis.
