About

Lighthouse Burnham prepares for the 10th year at Burnham Grammar School!

Lighthouse, the Christian run holiday club that welcomes around 800 children each day, is preparing for its tenth year at Burnham Grammar School from 25th to 29th July 2011. The day for the children runs from 10.00am to 3.30 pm for children aged 5 – 12 and 10.00am to 12.30pm for 4 year olds. All children must be pre-registered to attend so register your children now to avoid disappointment by clicking on ‘Registration’ and following the instructions for Burnham.

At Lighthouse our aim is for children to experience God's amazing love for us all and to discover God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit through the sharing and exploring of Bible stories. We also want them to experience fun, acceptance, unbounded patience, fair discipline and lots of love! The Lighthouse week is full of fun, laughter, games, sport, drama, dancing, singing, craft, messy games and the occasional gunging! A typical day will include a ‘Main Stage’ at the beginning and end of Lighthouse that all of the children and helpers join in with (apart from the 4’s and their helpers who have their own special ‘mini stage’ and activities until 12.30) and the rest of the day is split into 5 activity sessions which include ‘Lighthouse Teaching’ where the theme of the week is explored with a bible stories, craft, sport, drama and an afternoon ‘Lighthouse’ session where they recap the activities of the day and the children use their fun books. Have a look at some of the photos on the site to give you an idea of some of the things that happen at Lighthouse. It is also a great place for children and volunteers alike to make new friends and meet up with old ones. Many people describe Lighthouse as ‘the best week of the summer holidays!’

Lighthouse is a registered charity and is run entirely by unpaid volunteers from the local churches and community, many of whom take time off from work to volunteer for the week. There is a small unpaid volunteer management team that work throughout the year to ensure everything runs smoothly for Lighthouse week.

Lighthouse is financed entirely from donations and fund raising. Part of the cost is covered through donations from parents and carers of children attending. Although we don’t charge a daily fee to attend Lighthouse, it costs in excess of £10 a day for each child to attend Lighthouse and we do offer this as a guide for individual’s donations, or what can be afforded. We would not want to deny a Lighthouse place to child if cost is an issue, however donations are essential to enable Lighthouse to continue and be open to everyone. We also rely very much on, and are very grateful for donations from the local churches and other Lighthouse supporters (more information can be found on our website) to make up the shortfall in our costs.

As we are totally reliant on donations, we are very careful with our expenditure and are always looking at ways that we can obtain the best value for money and do plenty of ‘recycling’ of equipment. If you have a service that you could offer to Lighthouse either as a donation or at a competitive price, like printing of handbooks, the children’s fun books and coloured sticky labels for each day, or if you have spare resources you could donate like lanyards, id card holders, plain or coloured paper or card, a working colour printer, laptop computer, then we would love to hear from you. Please email carol@lighthouseburnham.org.uk

To enable us to welcome so many children we have around 250 Volunteers that help in all areas of Lighthouse either on the service or activity teams aged from 13 with no upper age limit - our oldest volunteer last year was 85! And we still have lots of openings for volunteers to help in all of the teams both before and during the week of Lighthouse and to cover security in the evenings and nights – so have a look at the ‘volunteering’ section to see how YOU can help.

All volunteers need to register with Lighthouse before helping and this year it is all being completed online - so please click on ‘Registration’ and follow the instructions to register to help at Burnham. You will need to complete the volunteer form and provide 2 contacts for references. To ensure the safety of children and helpers at Lighthouse, all people on site when the children are present are required to have a current CRB certificate and all volunteers must attend Lighthouse training sessions in order to help during the week regardless of whether they have helped at Lighthouse before or not. Any volunteer that has not completed training will not be able to help.

Although it would be great if you could volunteer for the whole week – we would still love to hear from you even if you can only help for one day, or just with the set up or break down of the site or with the security, or an afternoon of car parking we will always welcome your help!

If you need any further information about Lighthouse, help on how you can volunteer, or have any queries then please email to Carol Bader, Lighthouse Coordinator: carol@lighthouseburnham.org.uk