The ARC Centre; our first blog post!

Well what an interesting start to 2021!

Find out more about The ARC Centre and how we are doing in our very first blog post.

Our story.

The ARC Centre was first founded in 2016, by myself (Louise) and Iain. We initially set up in my mum's garden, with big dreams to open a centre to help educate children about animals and the environment. We started looking at land in order to build a centre, but couldn't find anything suitable. When the opportunity came up to rebuild the existing pet shed land at Greenvale Primary School, we jumped at the chance.

After getting planning permission, we started building and The ARC Centre was born! Everything was built ourselves, with help from friends and Iain's dad. Our doors opened officially in September 2018 and remained open until the coronavirus pandemic hit in 2020.

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Covid.

Since the pandemic hit, we have had some highs and many lows. What we have been overwhelmed by however, is how incredibly supportive all of our ARC family are. Whilst we love our centre and are so proud of it, we hadn't really realised until the pandemic hit what our centre means to those that attend our classes. Receiving words of support, seeing everyone rally with fundraising and sponsored walks and runs, and being sent essential items to help feed and look after our animals has been really touching. We know for a fact that we would not have survived this far during the pandemic without the support of all of our amazing families.

We know that we are not out of the woods yet; we are expecting a huge vet bill shortly and are still facing complications with our furlough claim. We have only received one small grant in lockdown 1 and have taken out a loan to help keep the centre afloat.

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Looking forward.

We cannot wait to see where the ARC progresses to in the next year and the next few years! We know that the pandemic will have implications on this but we are so excited for life after Covid (aren't we all!). With new planned arrivals, new classes and courses as well as the return of all of our lovely Rangers, we cannot wait to get started on developing our centre even further.

With our fundraiser, we hope that any funds raised will be able to cover our vet bill and electricity bills, and any additional money made will go into building Yondu our capybara a pool.

We are so close to raising £8,000 which is absolutely incredible and would help us so very much! Please help us by sharing our fundraiser. If you would like to donate, the link is here: https://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/the-arc-centre