Fri 2nd May

 Brilliant News: Work started on the chalet roof on 21st April. As part of this refurbishment the
flat roof is being replaced to improve heat insulation and drainage of rainwater. Take a look at our facebook to see photos of progress so far. It's looking good:) The refurbishment of the interior of the chalet to make it into a disabled friendly self-catering apartment will start on the 9th June. David Killbourn who has been a specialist volunteer with the Centre for a few years is our Project Manager & has been on site a few times already. Work will start on the ground floor bedrooms, transforming them into disabled en-suites on the 10th  November. Meanwhile we have put out an advert to recruit a marketing development officer. This position is integral to our plan for growth - we don't want to hide our light under a bushel - so please take a look and see if it would suit you or someone you know. I f you're on facebook please share the advert (Retweet on twitter). You'll find the full description on our website at   http://www.athollcentre.org.uk/pitlochry_residential_centre/jobs.html .
        
However we’re not resting on our laurels. It’s all go to get the next project off the ground, which is to extend the dining room to make a fully accessible conference room downstairs.
Thank you to everyone who helped with the Thrift shop last month. We raised £700 for the new conference room. The table fees for the Craft Fair the following Saturday also went to our appeal. We’ve also just heard we’ve been awarded £400 from the Enchanted Forest Community Fund. All of these contributions add to the Trust Fund requests Anne is making on our behalf.  so that God willing if all the funding comes through before the winter weather we’ll be ready to go ahead straight away.

Praise God we have found a new architect & team to take us to building warrant and then supervise the rest of these renovations - and all in time to satisfy another application. It's an exciting stage to be at and as a result of this newest application I have realised that we have now raised over £270, 000 which is over half way to our final target. 

Residential activity in April was mainly Easter holiday guests. Although B&B was slow the flat was occupied for most of the month and we ended April with a huge & highly successful UFM missionary conference. Community day groups have kept the Centre full of life during the week and of course we had a thrift shop & craft fair last month too. IT class has just started up again for 7 weeks, that's a morning & afternoon session, but WA lunch club finished last Friday until the autumn.  The new Creative Care Challenge Fund was launched here on Monday. This is a £10,000 fund to help people in Pitlochry & area to develop innovative ideas to provide support & activities for local people. 8 people came to receive advice & information on how to set up a business or community initiative, which is really encouraging. There's still time for folks to apply. Go to http://blogs.iriss.org.uk/pitlochry/ to find out more. This is the same initiative which got students from Duncan of Jordanstone to come here to do some research on community care and which has set up Pitlochry Forum, which is a group of locals meeting with officials to try to identify areas of care where the community & statutory bodies can work together to improve. Iain went to Edinburgh last week to speak at a seminar about this as part of the Scottish Co-production Conference. It's exciting to see the progress of this work and to be able to share in supporting our community cohesion.

Guests for the See Hear conference for the deaf are arriving this evening for their annual weekend. This group has been coming for over 35 years and now we're seeing adults who were just young people when Iain was last at the Centre in his 20s. It's so rewarding to be part of ministries which are going from generation to generation. Welcome back guys:)