EchoChild History
The EchoChild project was the idea of our founder, Barrie Clarke. In 1997 he came up with the idea of building a facility that children could go to and have fun while learning about the country side.
Barrie himself was brought up in a semi rural community. After he spent several years working in London and the Thames Valley and being a single parent at the time, he met plenty of other parents and realised that some of these children have never seen a farm or farm animals and they were completely reliant on there TV’s and computer games, fast food and the occasional visit to a theme park. The only time these children went to the country is when they were being driven through it in their parents cars!
This is where the concept came from and the idea started to develop. First of all as a pipe dream and the idea would come back every now-and-then. After working the concept on paper and proving, at least in theory, it could be viable he set up a small business which then sold on to raise money to put towards buying the land. There are other small projects raising funds exclusively for the project. The project needs approximately 300K for it to open and be sustainable. Whilst the fundrasing activities are raising a fair amount towards the project they needed mwe do need more help. Once opened, the project will generate some revenue from craft sales and produce sold at market and at this point would be fully self sustainable.
The funds raised will go directly towards the building costs and providing that the target is met, building will begin in June 2009 and the project will open its doors to the public in time for the Summer School Holiday break in 2010.
The Project will be open to children free of charge! For the life of the project.
Although the details are yet to be finalised, the project will be fully self sufficient. All energy generated will either be from solar panels or from gas generated by livestock. All costs that are generated by the project will be met by entry fees, craft sales and market sales of produce.
This is the first project of its kind and we all hope that this will be the first of many around the country.
Thank you for visiting our website and thank you again for your support.