For nearly eleven years the staff, parents and friends of St Christopher's School, Wrexham have dreamt of building their own hydrotherapy pool, for use by pupils with all sorts of severe disabilities.

Thanks to The Morgan Foundation that dream has now come true, as Steve Morgan opened the new pool last week. Built by Redrow at a cost of over £250,000, and with many materials provided at cost or for free from generous local companies, the pool will change the lives of the children at St Christopher's.

Speaking at the opening, Steve Morgan said: 'I'm so proud of everyone who has been involved in this project, so proud of my colleagues at Redrow and proud of all the other people who have been part of making this dream come true. To see the children's happy smiling faces in the pool today was just fantastic.'

Pictured, left to right: Ian Lucas MP, Sophie Lay, Lesley Griffiths, Steve Morgan and headteacher Maxine Pittaway.

There will be smiles all round at Ysgol Maes Hyfryd in Flint following the delivery of their brand new Smiley Bus, courtesy of The Morgan Foundation.

The bus, a fully wheelchair accessible 17-seater, replaces an older vehicle and will allow pupils to continue their weekly visits to a local hydrotherapy pool, to sports activities in Holywell and Flint and to lessons with Riding for the Disabled. Sixth form students also use the bus to travel to work experience placements, college courses and community activities every day.

As a special needs school with 140 pupils aged 11 to 19 years, Ysgol Maes Hyfryd offers students with significant disabilities the chance to experience sports, community, cultural and training opportunities. The Friends of Ysgol Maes Hyfryd have raised £10K towards the cost of the new bus through various fundraising activities, with the rest of the finances being provided by The Morgan Foundation.

This is the 21^st bus donated to date by the Morgan Foundation, to charities and social enterprises within the region.

Jean Taylor, founder of our supported charity, Families Fighting for Justice, and winner of last year's Morgan Foundation Entrepreneur Awards Against All Odds, has launched her book O.L.L.Y: A Journey. Written afterher son and daughter were brutally killed, O.L.L.Y helps children cope with the grief of losing a loved one. The O.L.L.Y group (Our Lost Love Years) supports children who have lost a loved one through murder or manslaughter.

Copies of the book, which feature Olly the Penguin and Molly the Polarbear, are on sale at Waterstones, Liverpool One.

Congratulations to ACSIL (Amputee and Carers support in Liverpool), one of our supported charities, for winnning the Night of Honour Award at the Black E for the Best Community Organisation in Merseyside and also for gaining the Brian Labone Cup for services to the community. Great news from a great charity!

One of The Morgan Foundation's supported charities, the Dee-Sign Choir recently travelled to Jersey to take part in the Eisteddfod for Sign Language Choirs 2011. All the children, parents and carers thoroughly enjoyed the weather in Jersey and visits to Aqua Splash, Crazy Golf and the beautiful coastline. They finished their trip by attending the church service on Remembrance Sunday. The junior group won silver and the adult group proudly carried home gold.

Well done all!

The winners of the fifth Morgan Foundation Entrepreneur Awards have been announced. For full details and photographs of the glittering awards ceremony at Carden Park Hotel please click here to visit the Morgan Foundation Entrepreneur Awards website.

In July this year, Steve Morgan completed the London Marathon in aid of WaterAid and his final donation to the organisation was £89,000 – the largest sponsorship figure they had ever received.

Since then, the sites that Steve visited in Rwanda have been transformed as part of the Clean and Green environment campaign. Using communal rainwater harvesting systems, primary schools, communities and orphan villages have benefitted from the provision of hand washing facilities, latrines, and underground water tanks for the storage of harvested water. The funds have also provided training for 15 Environmental Health Officers on the establishment of community hygiene clubs.

For more information on Steve's visit to Rwanda and the sanitation problems there, click here.

A one-off grant of £5,000 was made to UK North Blind Sailing Association in December 2010 to assist with the costs of refurbishing the Milne class yacht, Mermaid.

UK North Blind Sailing is based in Wallasey and the main catchment area to recruit blind participants and volunteers is Merseyside, Wirral and North Wales. There are some 60 members aged between 18 and 75 from across the region, plus 9 core volunteer, some of whom are sighted, qualified sailing instructors.

The group’s aims are to provide sail training for blind people, to allow them to participate in local, national and international sailing events. Last year the organisation facilitated keel boat training weekends for 45 blind and partially sighted people on a number of different residential stays at the Welsh National Watersports Centre at Plas Menai and organised their first RYA Dinghy Sailing course at West Kirby for ten visually impaired peopled. Volunteers provided transport to and from events, sighted crews and instructors on the water and guides inside and outside the sailing centres.

The sailing activities offer opportunities for social inclusion for blind and partially sighted members who, because of their disability, are frequently isolated from mainstream society through poverty, low educational achievement, low self-esteem, lack of employment opportunities, the inability to use any form of transport unaided, the inability to read facial expression and body language during social interaction, all coupled with the general public’s lack of awareness concerning the needs of visually impaired people.

The refurbishment was completed by a team of volunteers, both sighted and visually impaired and Mermaid made the second deadline for launching on 27th July and is now moored in The River Mersey off Rock Ferry. The Royal Mersey Yacht Club had set this date as “lift out day" for the Milne class yachts travelling to North Wales to take part in the Menai Straits Regatta so Mermaid was able to take advantage of this facility and be craned into the river.

A grant for £7,200 was made to Millstead Primary School in Wavertree in February 2011 for the installation of a sensory trail rail round the school. This was officially opened by Morgan Foundation Administrator, Jane Harris on Tuesday 19th July.

Millstead School has 70 pupils aged between 2 and 11. Children travel from all over Liverpool and are from many different cultures. Each pupil has a statement of Special Educational Needs as a result of them having either a severe or a profound learning diffculty, along with a wide range of additional needs including Autistic Spectrum difficulties, severe sensory impairments, physical impairments including Cerebral Palsy, and profound health needs. A large percentage of pupils require additional attention throughout the day to meet their ongoing physical needs, ranging from chest physiotherapy to gastric feeds and tracheotomy care. The school has a full-time Health Practitioner and an Assistant School Health Practitioner. There is also a team of Physiotherapists as the majority of pupils require skilled physical intervention to help correct posture, allignment and abnormalities of movement and development. A high proportion of pupils benefit from hydrotherapy, which offers marked physiological, therapeutic and psychological benefits for those for whom controlled movement is a struggle.

The Sensory Trail Rail is a continual tactile route which runs along the walls of the school corridors and shared areas. It is a sturdy, user friendly system designed with input from teachers of pupils with multi sensory impairments. It helps pupils, particularly those with visual impairment and or/autistic spectrum disorder, to make sense of the space in which they move and so promotes their independence in negotiating that space. At each break, such as the entrance to a classroom door, there is an information station where the pupil can press a switch and hear a recording telling them where they are. There is also a tactile surface and a picture or symbol.

Steve Morgan and Dave Edwards completed this year’s London Marathon and raised a record £39,000 for WaterAid. Steve has committed to doubling this figure, making it the biggest ever sponsorship figure that WaterAid has ever received.

A keen supporter of WaterAid, Steve visited the Bugesera district of Rwanda in November last year. He has since pledged hundreds of thousands of pounds through The Morgan Foundation, to fund WaterAid setting up its first sustainable water, sanitation and hygiene programme in the country.

Photo shows Dave Edwards (left) and Steve Morgan