Dear Friends,

A few weeks ago I may have been in touch with you concerning a Carnival promotion involving young people. If you were one of the many folk to whom I have spoken please bear with me whilst I bring everyone up to speed.

It has been a concern of Sandown Carnival Committee, and myself in particular, that as those of us who are involved with organising community events are not getting any younger, we need to think long term about the future.

As with all things our young people are the future and in this case are the custodians of ours and other organisations in the town. Therefore we would like to broker an event later in the year for young people, dreamt up by young people and most importantly organised by young people. The idea being that they become 'hooked' and will wish to continue in the 'being involved' mode and want to become the committee members of the future.

Since talking to many people around the town I sense a real commitment from all that this is indeed a worthwhile project and more - they want to be involved in some way. I think it would not be unfair to say we may have created a bit of a (nice) monster that needs attention!

I'm not sure of the next stage and how we might proceed, what events we are talking about, what age of young people should be targeted, will we (should we) also be talking to others who can input?

Therefore we've arranged a get-together for anyone who is/might be interested and we'll take it from there. So if you have received this invitation and/or if you know of anyone young or old who you think can input into this exciting project, please feel free to pass on this invitation.

Alan Ayres - Chairman, Sandown Carnival Committee.