Coffee morning Thursday 21st March

Look, we know we're always asking you for money, so here's an event that we're inviting you to free, gratis and for nothing. On Thursday 21st March we're laying on coffee and pastries in the William Jones Room (next to the library) straight after drop-off, for all parents who can make it. Just a chance to socialise instead of running straight off to work or home. Grange parents equally welcome. Hope to see lots of you there.

Wine, cheese, arm-wrestling and a very long bike ride

The FOMS wine event is becoming something of a fixture, but the latest wine tasting was a bit more special than usual. Our speaker was the brilliant Rob Penn - adventurer, broadcaster, cyclist, woodsman and TV presenter - who shared tales of a round-the-world cycling adventure that he embarked upon when life as a lawyer had lost its charm. From arm-wrestling border guards to unexpected friendships and multiple punctures, Rob's stories were thrilling and humbling in equal measure.

In keeping with the international theme, we tried wines from some of the countries that Rob visited on his travels (a blind tasting yielding some surprising results), and feasted on cheeses from the more predictably delicious France and Italy.

Raffle winners were delighted to win some of the wines that we had tasted during the evening, plus a rather special one chosen especially as a prize.

Rob will be a hard act to follow. If you have any bright ideas for future wine events, we're all ears!

FOMS on Facebook

One of the easiest ways to stay in touch with what's going on in FOMS is to join our Facebook group. It's a closed group for security reasons, so you'll have to ask to join, but it should be easy to find; just search on Friends of Monmouth School.

We use it to keep you up-to-date with our forthcoming events, to do shout-outs for help at events and to post photos from our latest socials.

Fundraising websites - easy ways to make money for FoMS

You can now earn money for FoMS just with the click of a mouse. If you register at www.easyfundraising.org.uk and nominate Friends of Monmouth School as your chosen charity, then every time you make an online purchase from a wide range of online retailers (including Boden, Tesco, Amazon, M&S and John Lewis), a small sum of money will got to FoMS at no extra cost to you. (Note: to earn funds for FoMS the retailer must be accessed via the easyfundraising website)

Similarly, if you register wtih its sister site, www.easysearch.org.uk, again designating Friends of Monmouth School as your nominated charity, you can raise money for FoMS every time you use it as your search engine. Each search raises £0.05 for FoMS and you'd be surprised how quickly the money adds up.

We have checked this out carefully and trialled it ourselves, and can assure you that it's clean, legal and won't involve you in junk mail or spam. Please register and start raising funds the easy way.

 FOMS Donations

Fundraising is central to FOMS activities, which is why we're always badgering you for money. The good news is that at some point your son is bound to benefit from the money you spend at our events. We try to make sure that our donations benefit the largest number of boys possible and donate to a wide variety of causes.

In the last year our donations have included goal posts for Chapel House, T-shirts for the music tour to Spain and Morocco, a leaflet about the Chapel, a rugby strip for a charity match to raise funds for this year's nominated charity, SKRUM, and waterproof coats for outdoor expeditions.

Last year we made a substantial contribution towards the building of a computer by A-level Computing students to enable Monmouth School to participate in the Folding@home project: an international, award-winning, charitable research project run by the University of Stanford to explore cures for degenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's, Parkinson's Huntingdon's and many others. The computer will form part of a "super-cluster" of computers processing data that will be sent back to the University.

We also contributed towards the purchase of three digital cameras to be art and photography students, softball equipment for the school softball team and golf jumpers for the golf team.