Love this pic of Kim Hebberd after her 10k Superhero run in aid of ovarian cancer earlier today. What a brilliant acheivement and over £2000 was raised for the charity Ovarian Cancer Action. Notice Kim sporting the fabulous new OvCa knickers being sold at M&S for the same charity. What a fabulous idea! Thank you Kim for your support and to all of you who sponsored.

Now it’s a certainty that dh has to teach for a day in a pink tutu. We will be setting a date in advance so that you can all have your digital cameras and video cameras ready. I think that the tutued dh needs a nickname (a bit like he gives to all the pupils) so that he can potentially become a mascot of some sort. Ideas please. Plus it must be a local newspaper story for sure by now?

I thought that this would also be a good time to let you all know that the final amount raised for Target Ovarian Cancer in March was £348. I handed a cheque over to them way back in mid-April. Many thanks have to go to everyone who helped organise and participate in the coffee and cake morning or to those who bought and wear pin badges.

More friends have fund-raising events planned this year – including and starting with the Edinburgh Marathon next weekend. I am so grateful for all these efforts and also for all the on-going messages of support I receive. There is not a day that goes by that I don’t get a message of support from someone, and these things keep me going strong! Love to all.

I had been invited to a fund raising lunch for 2 friends at work who are bravely walking 20 miles around Leeds Castle soon in aid of a Breast Cancer Charity ( They did the Moon Walk last year) and so I decided to make and donate some cupcakes to help them with their fundraising.

Mary Berry‘s recipe was very straight forward, put all the ingredients in a bowl and mix thoroughly. I put some pretty cupcake cases in the tin, divided the mix between them. The only twist to this to make it my own was that I added 2 strawberry chocolate buttons in the centre of each cake and put the tin in the oven and set the timer.

Half an hour later, the pinger sounded and I checked the cakes. They were all evenly baked and risen so out they came while I made the butter icing topping.

Instead of adding a little vanilla essence to the butter icing, I added some strawberry essence. Once the cakes were cool, I spread some of this on the top of each cake and added a slice of fresh strawberry to complete the cake.

The girls lunch fund raising seemed to be very successful and I will be thinking of them when they do their walk. Here is the link to read what they will be doing and when. There is a donate link within this if you would like to donate to this very worthwhile cause, even the smallest donation will help. I am sure they won’t mind me mentioning them- so good luck Fran & Clare ! xx

http://www.breastcancercare.org.uk/fundraising-events/walks/pink-ribbonwalk-6

I would also like to take the opportunity to dedicate this page this week to a dearly loved friend and colleague who lost her battle to this disease, gone but not forgotten.

Lorraine Day, we will never forget you.

I completed my 5k superhero run(walk) today!

Despite the stresses of the last week I actually got myself up and out the door at the crack of a sparrows fart and headed to Regents Park to meet my running buddy Gary – a fellow wordpress blogger who writes here

We arrived early eager to get our hands on the superhero costumes and changed into possibly the most unlikely superhero duo since Del Boy and Rodney!

the streets of London were safe for another day!

There was a mass warm up for the 1700+ superheros and the first song that was used was….

so whilst everyone was dancing around the field Gary and I continued our pre run ritual of a cigarette and left them too it. It was hard enough coping with the poxy moose head smacking me in the nose every time I moved around.

At the start line I took off like a bullet from a gun (in my head at least!) and within 1k the pain kicked in like someone was running alongside me with scissors but I carried on moaning my way round the course until finally the finish line was in sight and I raised my arms wearily aloft as I crossed it in a new personal best time of 36 minutes!

After hitting the floor and finally being able to take off the moose head I was able to fully recognise what I had achieved. Five Km doesnt seem a big distance to lots of people but for me it is a huge goal I reached and hopefully next weeks 10 Km run in London wont seem so daunting now – depending on how my knees feel in the morning!

Thank you to wonderful people who have donated money for Mind, a wonderful charity. I even managed to meet the Big Cheese of Mind Paul Farmer today. The Moose did a great job networking.

Moose with his medal!

Day 115, Reason 115: Today I am extremely grateful for all the rain we have had this year.

I know, I know, rain sucks – at least it does in my book! I am definitely a fair weather person (very different to a fair weather friend, I hasten to add.)

I feel at my best when the sun is shining and the air pressure is high. All this cloud and rain business does not suit me and leaves me feeling exhausted, headachy and a little glum. However, in spite of  the turbulent weather and feeling far from my best today, I’ve really got to hand it to the rain!

It feels like an age since I last felt well enough to leave the house, so this morning, my Mum kindly took me out for a drive to give me a change of scenery. We set off out into the countryside, which still looks lush and verdant -1 brownie point to the rain! Normally at this time of year, the wild flowers would be dying and the grasses turning yellow, so it was lovely to see it all looking so green.

We followed the winding country roads until we reached a sign for the reservoir and decided to go and have a look. The last time we went, all the way back on Day 10 of The Pollyanna Plan, the water levels in the reservoir were still looking decidedly low, despite the copious amounts of rain we’ve had this winter.

Last year was a glorious year weather-wise – even the winter was warm, dry, sunny and cloudless (hoorah) but this also meant that come the summer, we had quite a serious drought – not so good!

As we drove up the steep track to the top of the dam, I was eager to see how much difference all this rain had made.

Bravely standing on the top of the dam wall

Now, for a little game of spot the difference! This is what the reservoir looked like at the beginning of February.

And here it is today – the photo is taken from the same place – 2 brownie points for the rain!

On the way home, we took a different route and came across this beautiful Roman bridge over a river, that has far more water in than usual – more brownie points. And I have to admit that the clouds make the composition of the photo much more interesting.

Thinking about how grateful I felt today, made me realise that having a plentiful supply of clean, safe water is something I often take for granted. Others are not so fortunate. There are many places in the world that suffer extreme droughts and where the little water they have is filthy and contaminated.

This got me thinking and I have been doing a little research. Here is what I’ve discovered -

My target of raising £365 for Save the Children through sponsorship of The Pollyanna Plan (365 days to find 365 reasons to feel glad/happy/joyful) will pay for a water pump to give clean water to a whole village and keep families safe from deadly diseases. How brilliant is that?

If you can find it in your heart to sponsor me, your money will go directly to my chosen charity, Save the Children, whose vital work reaches more than 80 million children each year.

250 days to go

250 reasons to feel glad/happy/joyful to find

£238.68 to raise for Save the Children

Here is Avery in a beautiful dance float!

During the Halfway There Fair they revieced their ribbons for

Silver Fundraising and the Convio Challenge.

Captian Kristina Curtau along with Co-Captain Valkyrie Twine lead the team.

TO MAKE A DONATION TO HELP SAVE LIVES:
manuwroblewski@gmail.com (via paypal)

Or a one-off or monthly payment can be also be set up through the Harmony Fund (does not require paypal):
https://secure.qgiv.com/for/?key=MRLAUFK2ATEBWUW3DUN1

- under ‘Donation Information’ select
- ‘Please direct my donation to’
- and ‘Manuela Wroblewski’s cat rescues in Turkey’.

Our main volunteer Manuela cares for 200 desperate street cats and dogs, walking for miles daily to provide food and any urgent medical care – and is devoted to arranging adoptions and spay and neutering clinics. In Avsallar, Turkey street animals are regularly injured, poisoned and killed and Manuela is their only hope.

AVSALLAR TODAY DURING MANUELA DAILY FEEDING

- Manuela feeds more then 130 + cats each day
- who otherwise would get nothing to eat during the day
- all this is possible because of the donations,
- fundraising and Friday Five Dollars

The street cats of Avsallar, Turkey, faces

- indifference
- rejection
- hatred
- starvation
- abuse
- car hit and runs
- poisoning
- stoning

and now that tourist season is starting again, more and more animals are poisoned, hit by cars, sent to remote areas (forest and mountains) to starve to death.

TO MAKE A DONATION TO HELP SAVE LIVES:
manuwroblewski@gmail.com (via paypal)

Or a one-off or monthly payment can be also be set up through the Harmony Fund (does not require paypal):
https://secure.qgiv.com/for/?key=MRLAUFK2ATEBWUW3DUN1

- under ‘Donation Information’ select
- ‘Please direct my donation to’
- and ‘Manuela Wroblewski’s cat rescues in Turkey’.

Our main volunteer Manuela cares for 200 desperate street cats and dogs, walking for miles daily to provide food and any urgent medical care – and is devoted to arranging adoptions and spay and neutering clinics. In Avsallar, Turkey street animals are regularly injured, poisoned and killed and Manuela is their only hope.

Banks vs. Venture Debt Providers: 

In part I of my Venture Debt 101 series, I outlined the basics of Venture Debt financing for start-ups.   It’s fairly straightforward and provides a very high level roadmap of navigating if and when a Company should consider Venture Debt financing.

A topic that garners significant confusion is how to choose a partner when signing up for Venture Debt.   There’s certainly no shortage of institutions that provide Venture Debt financing, but who you choose may be critical in ensuring long-term financial viability for your company.

I’m going to again reinforce a point from my last post: Think long and hard about who you’re taking debt from and what type of provider you’re using.  Cash can be different shades of green, so use the same level of diligence you used with your equity sponsors as you would with your venture debt provider.

Fundamentally, there are 2 forms of Venture Debt Providers – Banks and Venture Debt Firms.

Banks:  Everyone of course knows what a Bank is.  Banks that offer Venture debt source capital from client deposits and offer Venture Debt as part of an overall debt/banking solution.   Banks most active in the Venture Debt space include organizations such as Silicon Valley Bank, Comerica and, Square 1 Bank (I’m defining Venture Debt here as term loans designed to help pre-profit early to growth companies extend cash runways.  As such, I’m not including traditional middle-market lenders).   Other banks such as Wells Fargo and more recently City National Bank, may also provide Venture Debt on a discretionary basis.

Venture Debt Firms:  Venture Debt firms, which first started forming nearly 30 years ago, are firms that primarily operate as closed ended funds with capital coming from 3^rd party Limited Partners (and in certain cases public capital).  The Venture debt firm universe is fairly large and fragmented with many smaller niche players surfacing over the past 10 years.  Some of the larger and more notable names include Western Technology Investment (WTI), Triplepoint Capital, Hercules Technology, Lighthouse Capital, Pinnacle Ventures, Gold Hill capital, Orix Capital, and Escalate Partners.

To be able to understand the difference between the 2, it’s important to understand the risk/return profiles of each.  The table below provides an illustration of this – I’ve added in Venture Capital Equity financing as a measure as well.

A couple of things to highlight off this chart:

-  Banks are ALWAYS going to be the cheapest form of financing you can find (optically at least, but more on that in another post), but rarely will take on significant amounts of risk (Sidebar – financing early stage companies backed by strong Venture sponsors is much more predictable than you’d think).  Most banks operating in this space expect losses of 1-1.5% on their Venture Debt portfolio.

-  Termsheets from Venture Debt firms, while often contrasted side by side with Bank termsheets, are usually not an appropriate comparison.  Financing from Venture Debt firms, is really more of a hybrid between Bank financing and VC financing and should be evaluated as such.

So let’s now get into specifically how they are different:

So what’s right for you??

It depends.  The easy (and lazy) answer is to pick bank financing because of the cost, but that surface level analysis will rarely yield you the RIGHT deal.  Here are a few questions to ask before choosing a lender:

• Is there good compatibility with the lender sitting across the table? Does the lender have a good understanding of your space and have the right temperament for the inevitable ups and downs of the economy and/or your business? Remember, this will be a multi-year relationship.
• What are the reputations of the lenders when times are tough? Which of them have a good relationship with your investors?
• Why do I really need this debt?  Basic runway is a standard answer, but I’d rather hear what critical milestones will be met using the debt.
• What’s the right amount I really need to make this worthwhile?  If I have a capital-intensive business, will I need more follow-on debt financing prior to the next round (and can the lenders provide it)?
• Am I ready to take on the responsibility of debt? Lenders expect you to pay their capital back and you need to prepare for ongoing conversations with your lenders – which will become increasingly frequent (with you and the investors) depending on the lender’s risk level.  

The answers above should go a long way in determining what form of provider is best (and who within each class of provider is best).

On my next post, I’ll be deconstructing a sample Venture Debt proposal. 

JOG-A-THON
Our inaugural school-wide all-day jog-a-thon fundraiser launches this Friday, May 24. This fun fitness activity for K-6, promotes healthy choices as all children strive for their personal best distance. Students set realistic lap goals based on age and development. Each student will receive a token of participation, with top fundraisers’ names appearing in The Short Report for June.

WITH YOUR HELP WE CAN DO IT
We encourage every family to participate in the jog-a-thon to the best of your ability.  Our goal is to raise $3,000+ to fund school programs, and with your help we can do it! If each family raises $10, we will achieve our goal!  Our success hinges on your involvement, so start asking your neighbors and families to sponsor you.

Our 2013 team. Bigger and Badder than ever!

For Team Bermudez, it was a huge success! We raised more money than ever before and almost double what we raised last year- over $5,500! More people were on our team than ever before. I never got an official total count, but there were a lot of us.

Some of our team members were gung-ho and sped through the walk while others of us took our time enjoying a leisurely stroll. It was hot and humid, but I figure that’s better than rainy or cold. The sun was certainly shining.

Me and my mom.

My mother-in-law hosted a get together at her house afterwards. There was no short supply of delicious treats. She probably had way too much food, but nobody was complaining.

I personally ate about half of this.

Emotionally, the day was bittersweet. It was hard not to think of last year when Ben was still with us, smile plastered to his face, celebrating one year since his lung transplant. At the same time, no one knows the highs and lows of Cystic Fibrosis like the other people present at Fair Park yesterday. (One team present was even there in support of a team member who had lost their battle with CF earlier this month.) It felt comforting to be surrounded by so many other people dedicated to finding a cure to CF. Doing something positive in the wake of something negative and painful was therapeutic. Plus, it always feels nice to spend time with family.

Stephen (on the right) with his mom and brother Josh.

During the walk I thought about Ben and how much I love him. I thought of each person who donated to our fundraiser. I thought about how lucky I am to have my health, to have never had a day where I couldn’t walk or run or play when I wanted to. I thought about the possibility of a time when CF is easily treatable if not erased completely.

I think something might be wrong with me. Ever since Friday I’ve had a ridiculous smile on my face and it doesn’t want to go away. Trust me, even when I’m having a serious moment or pondering all things academic or think-y like, there, just beneath the surface is a giant smile.

And every time my thoughts move to the Farm To Fork project, that just beneath the surface smile bursts through. In fact, as I write this post sitting in a Starbucks in Toronto, I’m sure that my neighbouring coffee drinkers are watching me as I grin from ear to ear. They’re likely wondering what I’m up to. I’d probably be wondering what I was up to as well.

The source of my smile is probably obvious. Over the last week the Farm To Fork fundraising campaign not only passed 50% of our $15000 goal, we smashed through it. At last check, citizens and businesses have really stepped up – donating over $10000 to the cause. They’ve recognized the potential of Farm To Fork to be a game changer – making sure that the people in our community who are struggling to feed themselves and their families get what they need. They’ve recognized that meaningful change can occur if we all just start moving things in the right direction. They’ve recognized that the power comes not from talking a good game, but jumping in and getting involved.

And holy hell, that is inspiring. What started as a simple class project has grown into something so much more than I could have ever imagined.

And the support is not just local. I’ve received emails, Facebook messages, and tweets from as far away as Berlin, Kentucky, and across Ontario and Canada. People are hearing about this program and they want to know how they can help.

I repeat – I never expected this thing to be what it has become.

But what is Farm To Fork? At its base level, Farm To Fork connects those of us with the ability to donate to the front line emergency food providers. These are the fine folks who support the members of our community – our brothers, sisters, parents, grandparents, and children – who are struggling to feed themselves and their families. It does so by sending donors a grocery list of items that the food pantry around the corner that you never knew existed might need, on the day they go grocery shopping. We’re also working on mobile apps that will use location based notifications to remind us the minute we step into a grocery store what is needed. And if the stars and planets align, it’s going to be even more than that.

But beyond the lines of code, the hours of testing already completed and as yet to occur, the meetings and presentations and blog posts and tweets, Farm To Fork has become something so much more to me. Farm To Fork has become a reminder to me of how awesome our world can be. It’s a reminder to me that, despite all of the terrible things that might happen every day, there are people out there who want to help. Despite the odds against them, despite the challenges and hours, days, weeks, and months of work, there are people out there who just won’t give up, just won’t say no.

And that, dear readers, is pretty effing amazing.

For those of you who may wish to help out our campaign, check out the link here.

http://lunchbagart.tumblr.com/post/50788578770/i-did-a-shirt-this-fellow-here-is-my-pal-jacob

I use the word “awesome” a lot. I assure you I am not a fifteen year old girl from the 1980′s. A lot of this process is awesome, from the people who have been so kind as to share our story to the generous donations to the amazing acts of people who want to help. The actions of family, friends and strangers alike does stagger me. Not a soul has been obligated to help and yet so many have and continue to do so. 

It is to all of you that I am incredibly grateful. Thank you, for caring about one little boy and his special needs enough to help unite him with a companion to give him such an improved quality of life. His life isn’t by any means bad now, but this companion will open up so much more to him while increasing his safety. 

I’m so happy to share some favorite photos with you from Megan and Mark’s session yesterday on the blog.  It was really such an honor to photograph them as they prepare for an upcoming deployment.  Time apart is never easy, especially during a deployment.  And it’s a special privilege to photograph a family at this time.  Thank you both for your support in this photographic fundraiser to benefit T.O.M.L. and for your service.

© Patrick J. Norberto 2000