We need a new minibus to bring people to & from the club to play table tennis, meet friends old & new & be part of this amazing community.
Brighton Table Tennis Club has a really strong sense of community. People love playing with us and helping us. We aim to inspire everyone who plays or volunteers with us to be the best they can be and everyone is welcome. Some of our players would find it hard to get to one of our sessions because of mobility, distance or cost so we help wherever we can. Our current minibus does over 15k miles every year but it's now on its last legs and desperately needs replacing. It is a vital part of the club as we use it to pick up and drop off players and take coaches and tables to our outreach sessions. We also use it to take people much further afield at the weekends.
To give you a brief snapshot of how the minibus gets used in a week:
Monday - we collect players with learning difficulties from Team Domenica and bring them to the club for a session. We have been doing this now for five years - it's a brilliant session
Tuesday - we drive coaches and some of our older players up to HMP High Down and HMP Down View for sessions with prisoners. The older players are coached by some of the now level one qualified coaches as they contribute back to the community by coaching. These sessions are inspiring and uplifting.
In the afternoon we collect young people from the traveller site and bring them to the club for a session - without this they simply wouldn't get here.
Wednesday - we pick up primary school pupil premium children from local schools for table tennis sessions
Thursday - we pick up young people from the Pupil Referral Unit for sessions at the club
Friday - more PRU and primary school sessions.
Then there's all the outreach sessions we go to and often take tables to - 35 a week.
Saturday & Sunday - competitions all over the country 30 weekends a year in Liverpool, Derby, Grantham
What we desperately need is a 17 seater minibus with the flexibility to move seats so we can accommodate wheelchair users and also use it to transport table tennis tables. Weekends take us all over the country to competitions, recording studios(!), local community events and visits to other clubs.
I hope this gives you an indication of how busy the minibus is and how important it is to the club and its members and just why we need a new van so much.
This project successfully funded on 1st March 2019