The average age of the group was just 19 and their main rule for fundraising was that it must be fun – the first event they organised was a disco. Today (many years later) that group is still actively raising funds – and still having fun (although we no longer call ourselves the ‘Young’ friends!).

So, what have we been doing all of these years? When we first formed, we mainly just provided support to the main group of ‘Friends’ and as such had no pressure on us to come up with great amounts of cash – whatever we could raise was a welcome bonus. As such we tended to concentrate on events that would raise awareness of the Samaritans to a younger group of people and hopefully raise some funds at the same time. To this end we organised Discos, skittles matches, stalls at summer events and a series of increasingly successful bicycle treasure hunts. We also assisted the ‘Friends’ at their annual Christmas Fayres and Flag days.

In 1983 the senior Friends group folded, and it was left to the ‘Young Friends’ to provide the much needed additional funding for the Cheltenham Branch. We took over the organisation of the traditional annual events and started adding some new ideas of our own. We started to run our first Pop Quiz’s and also made our initial foray into mass outdoor barbeque catering at the ‘Madsummers Day’ and ‘Madsummers Daze’ events in Pittville Park. These two types of events were to provide the mainstay of much of our fundraising over the next 20 years! In 1985 we started a 250 club (which is still running today - click the link! ) but with our fundraising activities starting to look decidedly more on the ‘serious’ side, we helped to form another group of Friends at the branch to allow us to get back to concentrating on the more ‘fun’ aspects of ‘FUNdraising’.

1987 saw the quite remarkable staging of a ‘one-night only’ pantomime called ‘SAMDERELLA’ which starred members of the committee and was based on our various fundraising activities to date. This was a massive hit and good fun to produce and be warned, dodgy videos of the event are still in circulation and can probably be "sniffed" out if you ask past Chairman Nick Lawrence!

1988 and 1989 witnessed the staging of the largest fundraising/publicity events that we had ever attempted with two ‘It’s a Knockout’ type events staged at the Prince of Wales stadium. These raised over £5,000 between them and provided the Samaritans with some very valuable publicity.

Throughout the nineties, we consolidated our best fundraising ideas and improved them to maximise our fundraising capability. Our Pop (and other) quizzes regularly attracted over 300 competitors at a time, and we evolved into the slickest mass barbeque experts due to a run of more than ten years at the annual ‘Picnic in the Park’ event. We published numerous postal quizzes, organised many treasure hunts (on bike, foot and in car), craft stalls, Boggit hunts (don’t ask!) and we also did our bit for the environment with a successful paper and aluminium can recycling scheme.

2003 saw the 40th anniversary of the Cheltenham branch of the Samaritans and the 50th anniversary of the Samaritan movement. To mark these occasions, we organised our largest fundraising event ever - Dragons on the Lake! and thanks to some generous sponsorship we raised over £10,000. In 2004 we celebrated our own 25th anniversary which was marked by a re-run of Dragons on the Lake, with 20 teams and over 9000 spectators raising over £8,000. The following year saw the third and final Dragon Boats event which though successful was proving to be harder and harder to organise each year (mainly due our own perfectionism!).

To replace this annual event, we decided in 2006 to try our hand at organising something a bit closer to our hearts and the 'Cheltenham Beer Festival' was born. We had brilliant weather at the start of September, and over 400 people enjoyed a selection of 27 different beers and ciders mainly from the local area, and we made a profit of over £7,000.

Over the next thirteen years we perfected the beer festival, in later years migrating over to craft keg beer and also incorporating an outdoor music stage and even a display from the ‘Sealed Knot’ Civil War re-enactment group in 2017. Sadly we were always at the mercy of the English summer weather and following a two year Covid-19 induced break, we held our last Summer Beer festival on a sunny day in 2022. We were not done with beer festivals though, and with the waning of the Covid pandemic, in February 2022 we presented our first, low risk, indoor festival at the lovingly re-ordered Pip & Jim’s (St Philip & St James Church) in Leckhampton. We built our own proprietary 10 tap keg system and ran a really successful two-day festival in this awesome space, returning the church to a status fit for the Sunday morning service before we left on the Saturday evening. We are now scheduling two beer festivals at either end of the year at this location as a replacement for the summer beer festival.

Our later years have not been all about beer though and in 2004 we were invited to form part of a team interfacing with the onsite camping stewards at the Glastonbury Festival. We made such an impression, that the following year we were invited to provide the entire team of 28 to man this vital function in the operations control centre. Our ever changing group of volunteers have been back at every Glastonbury since, raising money for their time on duty, and having a ball at the festival when off duty.

With our stewarding skills cemented, we have since provided stewards at many other events, including the annual Round Table organised fireworks at Cheltenham Racecourse and the annual Lechlade Festival.

With our fundraising relying on just a few outdoor events, the advent of the Covid-19 pandemic and UK wide lockdowns in 2020 was a devastating blow to our committee. We were made of sterner stuff though and had soon organised virtual beer festivals, a virtual theatre night and a Cheltenham World Relay challenge, all of which ensured that we continued to raise more than one third of the running costs required by the Cheltenham branch.

In 2021, we received a further boost when new Cheltenham Mayor, Steve Harvey, nominated our Friends group as his one and only charity for his year in office. This galvanised our committee and we ran several new events and even presented a one-off Retro Pop Quiz at Cheltenham Town Hall.

Over the many years of our existence there have been numerous people involved with the ‘Young’ Friends, with a core of people becoming more of a close-knit social group who happen to do fundraising, rather than a fundraising group who occasionally meet each other socially. We think that the main reason for this is that we have always approached fundraising as something that can be done successfully whilst still having a good time. This maxim seems to have worked, as in this time the group have directly raised over £350,000 for the branch as well as contributing to many other fund-raising and publicity initiatives.

It has been my privilege to be a part of this group since 1979 and it has been an honour to help to raise funds for the Cheltenham Samaritans, a group who freely give their own time and efforts to provide a much needed service for the people of Cheltenham and the surrounding area. Looking back on the sheer magnitude of events that this group has organised I am always amazed at what we have achieved and also immensely proud to have been involved.

Leigh Norwood
Friends of Cheltenham Samaritans