We Need Your Help - A Personal Message from Arun and Smita Mehra I am writing this special request for your dear help. The last 5 years have been a fantastic five years for Smita and I, meeting and working with some wonderful people. We are eternally grateful for everything that we have experienced and everything that we have, most importantly our family. As some of you may know already, this year myself and Smita were blessed with a beautiful daughter, Aashima who is now over 5 months old. She along with her brother, Parus, are my true inspiration who give me the energy and strength to be who I want and must be each day. My True Inspiration At the age of 7 weeks Aashima was diagnosed with several major heart abnormalities and since then she has been a real fighter undergoing major heart operations, with more to come. As a family, this was tough, but her resilience and strength for someone so little has truly inspired me to do something I really want to do, something that I have done before, and now want to do on a much larger scale, with your help. Helping Kids Aashima is fortunate to have a loving family supporting her in her good and bad times. But this is not the case for many kids in the UK. Many are in homes, or sick in hospital, or in care not having the love of a secure and safe family. This is where I need your help, even more so now that the credit crunch is biting. It is these kids and families that will really feel the effect of the credit crunch first hand, whilst you and I may just tighten our belt a little. Therefore, I really need your help to make this Christmas the BEST CHRISTMAS EVER for as many children as possible. So How Can You Help? We are not asking for a financial donation, but just some time, effort and generosity from your heart, something I know you can spare a little of. We are initiating a “Give a Little Love! 2008” extravaganza. All kids love presents, therefore, this year we aim to deliver as many gifts and presents as possible to disadvantaged kids and families in our local communities of London. Our target is bold – delivering 100 baskets of gifts to disadvantaged kids and families! So How Will This Work? It is quite simple really. 1. We need you and your friends to donate as many new children’s gifts and items to us, and send them to arrive at the Samera offices by Monday 22nd December,2008 at the latest. 2. We will in the meantime identify, by contacting social services and hospitals across London, children who will greatly benefit in receiving some generously donated kids gifts from you. E.g. orphanages, care homes, hospitals, domestic violence refuges 3. We will accept gifts up until Monday 22nd December, we will then deliver all of these gift wrapped gifts on Tuesday 23rd December 2008. 4. We have no idea as to whether we will receive one gift or thousand gift items but just by improving one child’s Christmas, and seeing the smile on their face, this exercise would have been well worthwhile! So Why Should You Get Involved? All over the UK, I always get a lot of positive raves about the Samera newsletter I write every few weeks, with many individuals wanting me to write it more often. We now have almost 1000 readers in over 30 countries and this is growing daily. All our readers have a strong interest in what we say and do and as you have probably guessed we do things very differently at Samera and The Neem Tree. “Give a Little Love! 2008” is our opportunity to ask all those readers, plus our clients for help to achieve our goal of helping at least 100 disadvantaged kids in London of having a much better Christmas this year. If you do get involved I can promise you the following: 1. You will feel personally rewarded and know that your contribution has made a significant difference to those less fortunate than you or I. 2. You will be invited to my new special seminar called “Work Less, Make More 2009” for absolutely FREE (personally funded by us), scheduled in the first half of 2009. At this event, we will celebrate the success of “Give a Little Love! 2008” but I will also deliver new ground-breaking concepts and ideas as to how you can “Work Less and Make More!” (This represents AMAZING value as our courses are usually priced at £395+VAT per person) So How Can You Help? 1. Donating gifts We need you to send us your gifts all of which would make a kids Christmas even more special. Items we require in their original packaging (minimum value £20): • New Toys • New Books • New Clothing • Sweets and Chocolates (Non-perishable items) • Toiletries • New Music items – e.g. CD’s. DVD’s etc We need you to gift wrap any item you send plus send with the gift • A description of the item, You can order online via sites such as www.amazon.co.uk, and get this delivered to the address below, however, you will need to ensure that the online supplier gifts wrap the item(s).• Who is it for (boy or girl, age range, size so we can allocate the gifts accordingly) • Approximate value of the gift (we are putting in place a minimum gift value of £20) • Your name and address details Please send your gift donations to: “Give a Little Love! 2008” c/o Samera Ltd 5 Morie Studios Morie Street London SW18 1SL To arrive by Monday 22nd December 2008 at the latest. Please provide your name, and contact details when sending your gifts. Please note we are not accepting any cash donations, only gifts! Email and Photo Notification: Also please email us on givealittlelove2008@gmail.com informing us if you have sent to us a gift(s). In addition, when informing us, please can you send us a photo of yourself too, this is a very important part of the whole process and will be required for us to provide a FREE space at our “Work Less, Make More 2009” event. 2. Sourcing Bulk donations In addition to the above, if anyone can source any of the above items in bulk through their network of contacts this will be greatly appreciated. Please email us on givealittlelove2008@gmail.com if you can help in any way here. 3. Volunteers on Tuesday 23rd December At this stage we have no idea as to how many gift donations we may receive, so we do not know how many volunteers we will need. But we do have a target of 100 gift baskets to be delivered, so if we get close to that or exceed that target we will need volunteers to deliver the gifts (We will need drivers on the day.) Please email us on givealittlelove2008@gmail.com if you can volunteer on the day, we will keep a note of your details and contact you nearer the time. Thank you in advance Finally, this email has been written in the true spirit of what myself and Smita stand for. We just want to help those less fortunate than us whilst inspiring our children to do great things! We look forward to working with you to inspire and improve the lives of our children, we can do it if we work together. If you have any questions regarding this or anything else please email us at givealittlelove2008@gmail.com. We would love to hear from you. Regular Updates By the way, I will be posting regular updates on the progress of “Give a Little Love! 2008” on my blog at http://www.arunmehra.blogspot.com Best wishes, Arun and Smita Mehra “The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step!” |