Last year was a really tough one for many reasons for my daughter and I but I learnt many things, the biggest thing being I want to raise awareness of what army children have to contend with at such a young age and I wanted alongside Linda to help distract and provide comfort for army children with a parent away from the family home.
Researchers have found that children with parents who are deployed to war tend to worry more and be afraid and sad. During war, a child may feel their world is less safe and predictable. Children may fear that the parent who is deployed may die in the war. We have experienced this first hand and this is why we want to help. We want to help the children explore the destination of where the absent parent has gone, we want to design workshops and activities to help offer a distraction to their current family situation and offer the comfort of a secondary community where others understand.
And so in June 2011 My Daddy is a Soldier Adventures was born!!!
Our aim is to provide easily accessible activities via the web, and activity workshops, bookable online for all British Army children with a parent serving away from the family home to attend, offering a distraction to the child at this difficult time.
We see a time in the future when British Army Children will benefit from various nationwide workshops and activities covering many different interests, run by My Daddy is a Solider Adventures and appointed regional co-coordinators, in time these would spread worldwide to where the British Army serve and their families live.
Our children will be able to have a positive experience with our events with children in a similar situation.
Our ultimate goal is to open a residential adventure centre available to all British Army Children with a parent away providing a retreat with planned activities offering respite in a community environment.
We are in the process of exploring initial funding to launch the site and beginning the journey to making a difference to the lives of British Army children, if you think you can help us in raising the funds, offering workshops or resources do make contact with us!
We shall also be running the annual My Daddy is a Soldier Adventures fundraising challenge in June 2012 which is going to be really exciting and we hope many more british army children will be coming along and joining in the challenge - we will be announcing more details soon!!
If you would like any further information or would like to help us on our journey then contact the founders:
So there we are, that’s what we have been working on over the last few months and this will be our main focus in the coming months. I know so many of you relate to this and we can't wait for the My Daddy community to grow.
Look forward to updating you very soon.......
This is a really amazing idea, I wish you guys every bit of luck and hope it helps many, many kids.
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