The Parish Magazine March 2024

20 The Parish Magazine - March 2024
feature — 4
FoStAC
REPAIR
IMPROVE
RESTORE
BEAUTIFY
MAINTAIN
PRESERVE
CONSTRUCT
By Magnus Smyly, FoStAC Trustee
'This is a beautiful church, and you can really feel
God’s presence here. Thank you for taking such
good care of it!' writes a visitor from Western
Australia on 29 December 2023 in the St Andrew’s
Church Sonning visitors book. It neatly sums up
the purpose of the Friends of St Andrew’s Church –
FoStAC.
FoStAC was established in 2003 as a Registered
Charity (Number 1101944), separate to the main
St Andrew’s Church charity, with the specific
objective to: 'Enable the restoration, preservation,
repair, maintenance, improvement, beautification or
reconstruction of St Andrew’s Church Sonning.'
Practically, this means FoStAC raises funds and
make grants to the Church for projects relating to
the fabric of the main Church building. The trustees
are blessed with helping to steward it for future
generations. And this, of course, includes raising the
funds to undertake the work.
EVENTS
In the 21 years since its formation, over £430,000
has been raised by FoStAC and given to St Andrew’s
Church.
To help meet our objective FoStAC organises
fund raising events, and you may have seen details
of these included in past issue of The Parish Magazine
as well as on posters around the churchyard site
and village. This month, for example we are holding
a Charity Fish & Chip Supper and Quiz in The Ark
on Wednesday, 20 March at 7.30pm. Tickets are £20
(please bring your own bottle/drink). They can be
obtained from Sally Wilson on mustangsallywilson@
gmail.com or 0118 979 3328.
Quiz teams will be in tables of four and payment
can be made to any of the FoStAC Trustees in
advance or by card payment on the door. The closing
date is 10am on Monday, 18 March to allow for fish
and chips to be ordered in advance.
EXAMPLES
FoStAC is also supported financially for larger
scale projects by a number of local charities who
have kindly chosen to benefit us. These include
Sonning Scarecrows and the Sonning Volunteer Fire
Brigade Trust.
Recent examples of our larger projects they have
supported include a replacement heating system
(>£50k) and LED lighting system (~£60k) – both of
which have reduced running costs for the Church
alongside benefiting the environment.
Another very important source of funds each
year for FoStAC are the regular donations from our
members and, when these are combined with Gift
Aid, they provide a significant proportion of our
FoStAC Trustees: (left to right) Ian
Hawkins.