Waterside Community Centre for East Anglian Sailing Trust

(l to r) Michael Hervey-Murray, Pat Smith, Mike Hickey, Janice Honour, Tracy Briggs, Tim Thomas and Bill Smith. The celebrations begin outside the building that will become EAST’s new Waterside Community Centr © Evening Star

If ever a picture could say a thousand words, this one certainly does! But if you cannot read the amount on the cheque we are holding it says £50,000.

This is the amount of money EAST won in the final of the Big Lottery - Peoples Millions competition last Autumn.

The money will be put towards the cost of converting a redundant building at Suffolk Yacht Harbour (SYH) into a new Waterside Community Centre for EAST.

Work to transform the building into the new centre will commence in January 2011 and will be finished in time for the grand opening ceremony and party on 23 April, East Saturday.

EAST‘s current training room and workshop was opened in 2001 by HRH Princess Royal and at that time provided adequate space for training and boat maintenance. Over the last few years however, EAST has grown significantly both in terms of disabled sailors, members and boats. When the opportunity arose to acquire the lease of a larger disused building at SYH the Trustees were initially concerned about the high cost of transforming it into a multi-purpose building that would meet our needs for the foreseeable future.

Never daunted by such a challenge Bill Smith realised there was a possibility of winning sufficient funds in the Big Lottery-Peoples Millions which would go a long way towards the cost of the transformation and he submitted an application in May 2010. There then followed a long wait until, in early August, we heard that we had been shortlisted for the final though we then had to submit a fully detailed project plan by early September. Again there was a long wait until the end of October when we were notified by the Big Lottery that we had reached the final eight which would be filmed by Anglia TV.

In order to win the £50,000 on offer we had to gain sufficient votes in a head-to-head televised competition with Barnham Broom Village Hall in Norfolk who were bidding for money to improve their recreation and play facilities.

We embarked on two major campaigns; the first was to plan the filming day so we could get a wide range of our sailors, both adults and children, to SYH in order for the film to show the significance of our work and the difference the new centre would make to disabled adults, children and their families in this area.

The second campaign was to drum up the thousands of telephone votes we needed to win. While the television audience would hopefully vote for our project on the night it was broadcast we could not rely solely on their votes so we planned a huge publicity campaign using local radio, newspapers, facebook and twitter. We also contacted thousands of friends, relatives and contacts in related organisations with the voting phone number on the day of the broadcast. The next day we heard that EAST had won receiving 7980 votes and Barnham Broom 2295.