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    Home Newsroom Newsletters

Our Special Friends 10th Anniversary Newsletter

A special edition of our newsletter to celebrate Our Special Friends 10th Anniversary. It is very difficult to capture the last 10 years in one newsletter and to showcase the breadth and depth of our work, as well as the challenges we have faced, but we hope that we can give you an insight into the value of our work and impact.

10th Anniversary Newsletter

September 2023 Newsletter

Keeping you informed with the latest from Our Special Friends

We hope you have had a lovely summer. It has been an extremely busy time for Our Special Friends helping people and their pets who are going through very difficult times, and our volunteers visiting lonely and isolated people in their own homes. We welcomed our new Animal Companionship Coordinator, Trina, in May of this year (read more about her below). We’ve been out and about at various events, raising awareness of our work and, in June, we celebrated our fantastic volunteers with our annual Volunteer Celebration Event.

September 2023 Newsletter

March 2023 Newsletter

Keeping you informed with the latest from Our Special Friends

In this uncertain and ever changing world, the power of animal companionship is never more needed. It provides security, connection to nature and our communities; and for many is the reason they are coping. We continue to develop and provide our animal companionship support services and thank everyone, particularly our volunteers and supporters for making our compassionate, community outreach possible. We have many stories to tell. Please see our Annual Report for a glimpse of our work.

March 2023 Newsletter

July Newsletter – Issue 16

Keeping you informed with the latest from Our Special Friends

The months go flying by and it’s time for our quarterly newsletter again. It has been tremendously busy these last few months. We enjoyed our favourite event of the year in June, Our Volunteer Celebration which took place a little later than usual this year due to the Jubilee celebrations. We usually mark the occasion during Volunteer Week, when we can take the opportunity to thank our volunteers in person for everything that they do for the charity…

July Newsletter – Issue 16

May Newsletter – Issue 15

Keeping you informed with the latest from Our Special Friends

We couldn’t go through April without marking our birthday. We celebrated our 8th (official) year on 23rd April and have set up a Just Giving 2022 Fundraising Campaign to encourage our supporters to donate, or to set up their own fundraiser to help us continue to provide animal companionship support services to an ever-widening community.

May Newsletter – Issue 15

January Newsletter – Issue 14

Keeping you informed with the latest from Our Special Friends

Our Special Friends has recorded a marked increase in referrals from people struggling with their mental health during the COVID pandemic. Being confined during lockdown can put a strain on any relationship but for so many, it was the last straw. Many people who have been relying on support from home visits or attending groups in the community suddenly found their support network vanish overnight. Their coping mechanism, gone!

Jan Newsletter – Issue 14

October Newsletter – Issue 13

Keeping you informed with the latest from Our Special Friends

We were delighted to be able to actually attend the East Anglian Game and Country Fair at Euston at the end of September. It was wonderful to dust down the gazebo and take part in a local event again after all these months of remote working. We are very much hoping that this will be the first of many, and that our schedule of events next year will get us out and about again with our ever growing team. Thank you to everyone who helped out and gave their time and to make the event such a success.

Oct Newsletter – Issue 13

July Newsletter – Issue 12

Keeping you informed with the latest from Our Special Friends

We have settled in well; the new location giving us the space we need for our ever growing team. We were delighted to be awarded a generous grant from West Suffolk Council to cover the first year’s salary for a new Animal Companionship Practitioner, to take the burden from Belinda (Founder and CEO), who can work on developing more robust monitoring methods to formalise the evaluation of our complex and multifaceted support model to replicate in other geographic areas. We will also be joined by a new Volunteer Support colleague, another full time role based at our new offices in Snailwell. Both roles have been recruited and all being well will start in August.

July Newsletter – Issue 12

April Newsletter – Issue 11

Keeping you informed with the latest from Our Special Friends

Monday 29th March saw our long awaited MOVE DAY!! And WHAT a team effort it was. Carefully orchestrated by Bil Thorn, our Administrator, our goods and chattels were duly collected by Tom & Colin from Glasswells who did an absolutely sterling job of getting us from A, B and C to D. We are so very grateful to Glasswells who helped us with the move. Our new home, at the British Racing School is light, bright and spacious and we now have all of our belongings under one roof! It was very much a team effort but particular thanks to Bil for making it all run so smoothly.

April Newsletter – Issue 11

January Newsletter – Issue 10

Keeping you informed with the latest from Our Special Friends

We hope you will enjoy reading our Annual Report 2020-2021 which should have arrived with you yesterday. It is with enormous thanks to Max Caine from Caine Design that we have a wonderful new design to show off this time round. Our thanks must also go to Nicki Glen who worked with us on compiling the layout and content.

January Newsletter – Issue 10
Annual Report 2020-2021

Contact Our Special Friends

If you have a general enquiry please fill out the contact form below.

If you would like to refer yourself or someone that you know, or you would like to join our lovely group of volunteers please select the appropriate form on the right.

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    Snailwell Road
    Newmarket
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