TWO MEMBERS of Stoke City's Community team have volunteered to provide valuable assistance for Caudwell Children with the trip-of-a-lifetime which has been organised for a group of North Staffordshire youngsters and their families.
Hayley Buckton and Saranjit Kairo have flown to Florida on a Destination Dreams trip which will take in world-renowned theme parks and attractions so that the families can make the most of the quality time away from hospitals and clinics.
Hayley and Sanj will be sending stokecityfc.com a daily blog of their experiences as they provide help for the medical staff. Here they begin with the journey . . .
Travelling day
We travelled down to Gatwick and arrived at the Hilton - if it's good enough for Paris, it's good enough us!
We were met by the Caudwell staff prior to meeting our families at 8.00pm.
We were allocated a family each to support throughout the day of the flight.
Surprise, surprise, Hayley was allocated The Sutton family from Stoke who are big Potters fans, so the topic of conversation was the Hull game on Sunday!
Sanj was allocated The Vidal-Pillay family from Brixton, and Rosie the Breadmorefamily from Sussex.
Monday morning was an early start due to the flight ahead.
Our task for today was to support the families pre, during and post flight.
Considering the enormity of getting 25 families with diverse needs to the other side of the world everything ran smoothly; all credit to the Caudwell staff.
The flight was just under nine hours and we certainly felt it. We arrived in Orlando to be greeted like VIP's by Give Kids The World volunteers, these are the volunteers who work at the resort where the children and their families are staying.
Coaches took volunteers, children and families to Give Kids The World, once again greeted by volunteers.Finally, onward bound to our Hotel where we couldn't wait for our heads to hit the pillow at 2.30am GMT.
