A Big Thank you
The following is a copy of Hele’s speech from yesterday – it is full of thanks and appreciation BUT the real person behind the rebirth of our child care centre, Little Gillies, is herself – Hele Deakin you are a formidable force – wow what a journey:
‘I wouldn’t have believed you If you had said to me this time last year that we would be standing here and celebrating what an amazing community can achieve when tasked with the impossible.
Little Gillies was born through necessity; a community that needed a safe place for their small ones to be cared for; somewhere to enable parents to be able to work; somewhere that employers could rely on so they could staff their businesses.
I was in two minds about bringing Brodie with me today – not much fun for a baby at an event like this but Brodie is my reason for doing all of it. He attended every business meeting, every ideas session, every cleaning, organising and demolition task that we have done along the way so it seemed right to have him here with me. I dragged this poor child on a 10 mile walk with Steffan raising awareness of our cause! I only hope one day he knows that the maternity leave I had planned for him was used for something much bigger.
In the beginning there was so much that we didn’t know – and still don’t! We were naive enough to start but stubborn enough to see this through, and with perseverance and amazing people we seem to have smashed down many barriers and really shown everyone what we are made of!
There have been some key people along the way who without we couldn’t have got through;
Duncan and the endless issues we had both setting up a charity and the Ofsted process, the panicked messages and meetings you have set up in support of our plight;
Nik Night and the complicated paperwork, writing constitutions and applying for various things – not to mention your ongoing support
Val Chitty who without her initial support we couldn’t have even considered setting up LGs
Alex for believing in me and using her amazing skill and knowledge setting up the founding staffing team and arranging these wonderful canapes and drinks today – not to mention Holkham and their endless support.
Daniel Thrower and the Wensum Trust for making it possible for us use to utilise this fantastic space and entrusting it to us responding to 000’s of emails and always making us a priority
Rachel Stroulger for the impact on the school through vans and work people on the school premises and always being so supportive to me I am excited to keep working with you going forward
Donna – for introducing us to a drill cleaning attachment & your cleaning skills are second to none – you gave up your valuable time making this building spotless!
Cat for stepping in to help ensure we keep on top of the finances – a fellow trustee and LG mum also juggling your life and workload to make this happen
Lucy for always showing up (often with her family) to do the hard graft and share her teaching knowledge – stopping us painting rainbows all over the building too! I should add David all of the urgent call outs for your electrical skills!
Johnathan – who moved in for a couple of weekends to help make our outside area safe for children and transforming an overgrown unusable space to what we see today!
Nigel who designed and created our amazing website, sharing his valuable building knowledge and stepping in to fix many broken things!
Scott who was there to pick me up when I had nothing left to give. Coming with me on this journey and even doing the horrible job of clearing the blocked drains after what felt like days of jet washing!
Sarah our amazing manager who has cleaned, scrubbed and sorted since the beginning. Writing what seems like a thousand policies (that I delegated to Alex to check – sorry!) and always been such a positive driving force behind what we are doing
and lastly but by no means least
Fran – you are literally a machine. I am certain you have 24 more hours in the day than the rest of us; ordering, planning, making, creating and finding money for us to do even more amazing things I genuinely couldn’t have done it without you! THANK YOU
There have been so many others many in this very room who without your support, time and energy we would not be where we are today! I cannot thank you enough for making this amazing nursery possible for the people of Wells and the surrounding area.
This journey has not been easy, and not one I would choose to do ever again but I am glad we did it. I am proud of what we have created and I am humbled by the community spirit backing us all the way. At times when I wanted to throw in the towel this is what motivated me to keep going.
We have so many plans for the future of Little Gillies; a name chosen as it is specific to Wells; a happy activity most young people from our community will do when they are small with their loved ones. For now however I want to raise a glass to all of you and just say
THANK YOU WE DID IT!’ 🦀🦀