Nicaragua – Raleigh International
Thanks for visiting my fundraising blog page! Here I will be detailing my attempt to fundraise £800.00 for Raleigh International in order to make my expedition possible. I will be taking part in personal challenges and crazy physical feats in order to earn your sponsorship.
I’ll be very, very grateful for any sponsorship that you can provide me with. £800.00 is a high target for me and I’ll be truly thankful to everyone who has taken time out of their day to help make my ICS placement possible.
To give you a taster of what I have in mind, I have plans to:
– Climb up Mount Toubkal in Morocco (4,167M) in May. (The highest I have ever been is 1085M for Mt Snowdon!)
– Devise/take part in personal challenges (e.g. I’ve never vegetarian before, I could be vegan/vegetarian for a time period or live on £1 a day)
– Bake things. Make things. Sell things. The list is endless!
Nice incentive #1:
– For everyone who sponsors me, I will put your name in a hat. At the end of (hopefully) reaching my target, I will be picking out a random name and the lucky winner will get a nice present/I’ll bake you a cake.
Fundraising
14th May 2013: With less then 10 days to go until my trek on Mount Toubkal, I advertised my JustGiving page a few more times via social media. Ekene (from Dealogic) sponsored me £50.00 bringing me a lot closer to my target.
In the beginning, I was worried about the prospect of fundraising £800.00 as it is a lot of money. Fundraising has brought to light how incredibly generous people can be. I’ve had best friends with no money sponsor me. Student friends with no money contributing what they could. Even school acquaintances whom I haven’t seen in 5+ years sponsoring my page. It brings me so much joy to read the “someone’s donated on your page” email. It reflects more than just money. The act ingrains selflessness, generosity and kindness and I’m always extremely grateful to everyone who’s sponsored me to help me make ICS possible.
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Tuesday 28th May 2013 – Summit of Mount Toubkal 🙂 |
7th June 2013: Today I applied for a “Jack Petchey” Volunteering grant of £250. I am currently £366.43 off my fundraising target and I do feel a little like I’ve exhausted my network. Sometimes I feel bad asking student/volunteer/poor graduate friends for sponsorship as they themselves don’t have a lot of money. I’m going to dip into further external methods for funding my Nicaragua trip with Google as my biggest help :).
12th June 2013: Today I used a free period at school to google through various grant/charitable organisations for finding sponsorship. I found very few organisations where I fit the criteria for applying for a grant so I’ve got all my eggs in one basket for the Jack Petchey application.
I also used a free evening to write everyone’s name on a piece of paper and put them all in a hat. My fundraising deadline is 30th August and I will pick out a winner live on video and post it on this blog page! 🙂
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Hat raffle 🙂 |
24th June 2013: Lack of updates due to lack of donations lol. I’m still remaining high spirited and I have my fingers crossed for the Jack Petchey grant. I have 2 plans in the pipeline: on Friday 28th June I will be holding a cake sale at the City Year office. Last week, I attended a ‘Public Relations’ training, and I plan to submit an article to a local newspaper in order to raise publicity for ICS/fundraising.
29th June 2013: During our ‘Leadership and Development Day’ at the City Year Office, I held a cake sale at lunch-time for fundraising. Matt and Chelsea helped me bake and I made a total of £31.50 on the day, bringing my total up to 59%.
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Chocolate krispy squares, banana cake, cupcakes, chocolate & aubergine cake and white chocolate and raspberry cake (0.50p – £1.00). |
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Met a bunch of lovely people 🙂 |
£850.00/£800.00 raised (106%, yay!)
Post Nicaragua
- Formed a active Women’s and Youth group that will continue after Raleigh.
- Extended and repaired the water system. The water access has increased from 28 houses to 45 and we installed over 10 new taps.
- Made 28 new vegetable plots for families, gave out seeds and organised a training from a local partner, the co-operative, on how to maintain them.
- Constructed 14 new eco-ovens.
- Hosted x2 Community Action Days (healthy eating and community painting)
- Held 10+ school sessions on environmental issues such as waste management, recycling and water conservation.
- Built x2 new eco latrines, one for the school and one for the community centre.
- Renovated the community centre by painting the inside and outside and installing electricity with the help of the local people.
During our project, our team were assigned to make a video on vegetable plots. A copy of the video is below:
- Helen W
- Debora M
- Joey C!