I AM writing on behalf of Bridges to ask if you would consider pledging a promise for our summer promise auction on June 14. Bridges and Home-Start are working together to raise funds to be split between our two charities.

Bridges is 30 this year and from small beginnings has grown to the vibrant centre it is today. It's home to over 60 clubs and societies, is the base for community projects, Building Bridges, Community Connections, Social Circles, for charities, Home-Start, Alzheimer's and Monmouth People First, for entrepreneurs and start up businesses and over 1,000 visitors a week.

Yet Bridges is a charity which needs to produce its own income in order to maintain the building, retain the staff and to develop further projects and links with the wider community. So this year we are aiming, with your help, through our various events to raise £30,000: a thousand pounds for each of the years we have existed, to take Bridges forward for another 30 years.

Home-Start trains and supports volunteers to visit families in their own homes for a couple of hours each week. Volunteers act as befrienders, supporting parents in situations as diverse as isolation, bereavement, multi births, illness, disability or who are just finding parenting a struggle.

They provide non judgemental practical and emotional support and help build the parents' confidence and ability to cope. Normally the family has to have at least one child under the age of five.

Home-Start would like to be able to have a treat fund for the families they are working with. Taking the children out for the day to the seaside or theatre is a fairly easy thing for most families, but if you are a single parent, or have a disability, or just don't have the confidence, then this can be out of the question.

With the help of a Home-Start volunteer the impossible becomes possible. We are fundraising to give the families we work with the kind of treats that help families build happy memories.

If you would like any more information or you have a promise you would like to pledge please email or ring Bridges on reception@ bridgescentre.org.uk or 01600 715638.

– Mark Walton, Centre Director, Bridges, Monmouth.