Never has our strap line been so apt as today! We’ve always liked, “Making the impossible, possible” ever since it came to us as a way of expressing Matthew 19:26, ‘Jesus looked at them and said, “With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.”‘

Phase two of our first project started on Monday 1st August – I write this on Sunday 7th and boy, have things moved on. With a congregation of some 8 regular adults until very recently, a project with an estimated cost of £100,000 seemed an impossible dream. However, as we have seen, God has his plans for his centre in Cross Hands and has made the impossible, possible.

We are very grateful for the help and support we are getting from tradespeople who are currently working on the Redrow site. If it was not for the Redrow build going on alongside the church, we would not have such ready access to such skilled individuals and at prices that for us as individuals would be impossible. But God makes the impossible, possible.

Photos in the video below show the development that has been achieved in the past week and the entire church fellowship is excited to see how the rest of this second phase continues over the next few weeks. We’ll keep you updated so watch this space!

The clocks have gone back, the evenings are getting darker, it can mean only one thing: Bonfire night is nearly upon us!

This Saturday, November 6th, at 6.30pm GMT, Give A Brick treasurer Dr Egg and his lovely wife will be hosting their annual Bonfire party. For the first time ever though, they’re holding the event in aid of Give A Brick. Cool eh?

If you live in or around West Wales, come along on Saturday evening. It’s looking set to be the best display Ty Canol has seen to date.

But (and here’s where it gets interesting for everyone else) do you remember our party back in July when I said we were testing the new tech? Well I’m delighted to announce that the Give A Brick Fireworks party will be streaming live via UStream. The indoors bit will be done via the laptop but, thanks to the wonders of technology (and last year’s Christmas present!) I can use my phone to show you the wonderful display, live as it happens!

From half past six on Saturday, just visit Ustream.tv/channel/give-a-brick and you’ll be able to join in the fun.

People will be donating on the night and if you’d like to help with that too, why not be the first to donate via our new Just Giving party page? JustGiving.com/fireworks-party

Image: Liz Noffsinger / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

This is a really exciting day for Give A Brick. For months I’ve been dreaming about writing this post. Seriously. I’m so excited, I can’t type in full sentences! At first glance, today’s thing won’t be that big a deal for you. Bare with me though and I’ll explain. But first, the big announcement:

Give A Brick has joined

This means lots of stuff but (in my head at least) it means we can finally start living up to all the aspirational things I’ve been dreaming about. People coming here, reading about the brilliant stuff we’re doing and catching the vision.

Teaming up with Just Giving allows wonderful people like you to do something exciting in the name of Give A Brick. You can create your own fundraising page, add the Facebook app to your profile page and download the Just Giving app for your iPhone.

You can tweet and email all your friends and family from your fundraising page, asking them to support you as you support us.

You can even be one of the fabulous people who commits to giving a fixed monthly donation.

All this stuff is possible and super easy thanks to Just Giving.

Now there is a catch and it’s something I personally battled with a few months ago. Just Giving is our first regular admin cost. You’ve got to spend money to make money, I get all that. But because I’m on a personal mission to prove that you don’t have to have a massive budget to do lots of really good stuff, I’m very careful about every single penny we spend.

Just Giving costs £15 per month + VAT so with the current market, about £17.60 (around $28 according to the app on my phone.)

The great news is that Just Giving is set up such that when someone Gives A Brick via Paypal (currently the top donation method here on GiveABrick.com) we only lose 2p on every pound donated and (and this is a biggie) we get Gift Aid. With our own Paypal efforts we lose 22p and we can’t easily claim gift aid. (What is Gift Aid? Read about it here.)

Once we get this place running smoothly and being all lovely, shiny and compelling, Just Giving will pay for itself just by the way it saves us 20p on every single donation.

But what I’d really like is to find an amazingly kind company or individual who is willing to commit to donating that money on a monthly basis to pay for our use of the Just Giving service. If you know someone like that, please ask them to email me (el (at) giveabrick (dot)com) or they can set up monthly giving from our shiny new page on the Just Giving site.

That’s it for now. I have some more (very different but still super exciting) news for you tomorrow so if you don’t want to miss it, be sure to sign up to our RSS feed, follow us on Twitter or sign up to our sparkly new newsletter.

In the meantime, thanks for being with us thus far. Hold on to your hats, the next bit is going to be awesome!

And have yourself a fabulous day

P.S. If you’re not sure where to go next, check out our new What Do We Do? page or for my latest blog post, head over to Give A Brick friend Matthew Needham’s Big Red Tomato Company where yours truly has a guest post.

On July 24th 2010, Give A Brick is holding it’s inaugural Give A Brick Cocktail Thing. The short video below will tell you more about it but in case you’re in a rush (or somewhere where you can’t watch video) here’s what you need to know:

What? The Give A Brick Cocktail Thing

Where? Ty Canol, Peniel, Carmarthen, SA32 7AH

When? July 24th 2010, from 6pm until late

Why? To have fun, meet friends and to raise funds and awareness of Give A Brick

Who? Everyone and anyone who loves to smile

RSVP? Yes please, by July 19th. You can send an email to cocktails@giveabrick.com, ring or send a text message to me (Eleanor) 07540154608 or add your name and email address to the form below.

Other stuff? Free camping on site (just bring your own tent and toothbrush), free collection service from Carmarthen train station to Ty Canol (this will need to be arranged in advance so please get in touch), free games, cocktails (alcoholic and non-alcoholic) and tours of the gardens at Ty Canol.

Questions? Ask them. What have I missed? What else do you need to know? Ring, email, text, leave a comment below, tweet, write on our Facebook page wall … get in touch in whatever way is best for you.

This is a super quick post to tell you about a product launch one of our Give A Brick friends is having today. He’s a little bit bonkers in my humble opinion because his wife is expecting a baby. So what? Their baby was due two days ago! And here he is, launching a product. Mad!

Anyway, I love to support our friends so I promised I’d stick a little announcement up telling you it was opening today. You can find out more over at The Big Red Tomato Company where Give A Brick friend Matthew Needham will tell you all about it in his own words.

Apparently there’s some rule about disclosure that says I must tell you that that is an affiliate link. It is. However, our affiliate link is linked to the Give A Brick charity Paypal account, not mine. I thought that was important. I (Eleanor) won’t earn a penny if you go ahead and grab a copy. You will however be donating 51% of the price you pay to Give A Brick. In my eyes that’s a win-win situation.

And in case anyone reading this thinks I’ve sold out, think again. Give A Brick won a copy of this back in May. I’d never write about something I didn’t personally own (except maybe a beautiful beach in The Maldives but that’s different )

Following on from last week’s video which showed you just how quick and easy it is to register to shop online via The Giving Machine and give to your favourite charity for free, this week it’s time to take you shopping. Cool eh? Check out the short video below to see just how little extra time it takes to shop while they give.

I’ve mentioned The Giving Machine and how super duper it is before. However, even some of my closest friends still don’t use it. However, if you live in the UK and you shop online, you really should do so via The Giving Machine. Yes, I’d love you to support Give A Brick but to be frank, even if you have another charity you’d rather support, that’s still better than no charity at all

This short video was meant to be just 60 seconds but I went over. Hope you’ll forgive me and watch to the end Coming next week, a short video showing just how quick and easy it is to shop online via The Giving Machine.

Last Friday, after growing his hair for almost a year, our Dr Egg, Mike Simmons, lost it all for Give A Brick. As promised, we have a short video for you to celebrate his big day. Enjoy

A little later than planned (I had a blog post buzzing around my brain that had to be set free last night when I should have been editing the video below) welcome to this week’s Follow Friday. If you’re a regular visitor you’ll have seen him around here before but it is my pleasure to introduce Give A Brick’s treasurer (and my dad!) Mike Simmons, aka Dr Egg. If you don’t already, you can follow him on Twitter and I’m pleased to announce that he’ll be tweeting on behalf of Give A Brick too.

Next Friday afternoon, Dr Egg is having is head shaved on behalf of Give A Brick. It’s being done in The Temple of Peace in Cardiff @ 2pm so if you’re a little local, it would be fantastic to see you. I’ll tell you more about Dr Egg’s Hair Shaving Adventure at the end of this post but first, here is his interview:

I had to edit out the usual quick fire round as it was already getting longer than I wanted. However, you’ll be pleased to hear that the quick fire round will be posted below just as soon as I get it uploaded

So, about next Friday. Many months ago I said I’d shave my hair off for GAB, but I’d want to raise £10K before doing so. My lovely husband joined forces with my mum and they told me I wasn’t allowed to. Yes, I know I’m a grown up but I’ve learned it’s never good to quarrel with my mum

Dr Egg stepped up to the plate and many months later, (and thanks in part of a kind legacy of £2K left to GAB by my grandmother in her will) he’s now raised the promised £10K. This would have been impossible without the support, encouragement, tweets and donations from you so give yourself a pat on the back and thank you

If you’ve not yet given a brick, it’s never too late to do so. You can Give A Brick very easily via Paypal or Charity Choice by clicking on these words. Thank you

If you’re in a rush, here’s what you need to know: The Give A Brick trustees met on Sunday afternoon and as a result, we’re now in a position to ask you, the wonderful GAB community, to send us your ideas for the next project we should support. Application is via a video post and we’ll be uploading the video applications to our YouTube channel. As such, we reserve the right to edit if necessary and please, for copyright reasons, only send us your own videos. Videos should be sent to help (at) Give A Brick (dot) com

OK, so the time starved people know what they need to know. For the rest of us, I have a short video and an open email from Give A Brick Treasurer Dr Egg telling you more about this development.

And here’s what Dr Egg had to say about these last few days:

“Our trustees meeting was an exciting time on Sunday when we heard all that Eleanor had been able to achieve with the support of the on-line community that is getting behind Give A Brick.

Give A Brick works in a totally different way to other charities.  Many other charities will have money in the bank and invite people to make applications of support.  Others may have money in the bank but make a new appeal in response to some need.  At Give A Brick, we recognised that if we dream to support a project, we start with nothing but ask everyone who is committed with us to Give A Brick and ask their friends to do the same.  A brick represents just ￡1. We realised with our first project to support Cross Hands Christian Centre to build their community centre annex that like them, we didn’t have ￡100,000 but maybe, just maybe, we could find 100,000 people who would give ￡1.

Some dreams will be relatively modest. Indeed when we recently learned that a brilliant young blogger was being hampered by the lack of a dedicated domain name, we decided that we could back that because it would make little difference to our first project.  We believe that by such little blessings, Give A Brick will be blessed.  Who knows, our entrepreneur may be the next Bill Gates and just look what his foundation is achieving for good across the world!” – Dr Egg

Remembering that our remit is fairly wide open (children, young people, the elderly and those facing financial hardship) it is now up to you, the community, to spread the word. Talk to people. Find out what they need. If you don’t need help personally, you can bet they’ll be a project in your community that does so tell them about us.

Videos should ideally be less than 10 minutes long and are an opportunity to tell the world why your project deserves support. We’ll be adding the Give A Brick logo to the start and end of your video and will send you a link to your video when it is uploaded to our channel so you can tell your friends and family members. We’ll be utilizing the comment and vote system at YouTube to gauge support for a project so feel free to tweet, re-tweet, write and talk about your video.

Videos can be sent in just about any format and should be sent to help (at) Give A Brick (dot) com

I look forward to seeing your project