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| Ready to walk the Walk...my friends raised £1,200 plus |
For the past four months I have been trying to raise funds for a charity close to my heart…a cause dedicated to ending the suffering of youngsters like my granddaughter Daisy, who almost lot her life to Crohn’s Disease.
My cunning plan was to try to lose two and a half stone through a sponsored diet. It was hardly a Mission Impossible…indeed it was Mission Dare Not Fail, because I could hardly let Daisy down by continuing to resemble the Princess of Whales.
In the 16 weeks I’ve been fighting the flab, I’ve lost all but half a stone of that 35lbs target, but it’s been tough going, believe me. I also made a mess of the sponsorship side because of my inexplicable embarrassment when it comes to asking people for money. And because I was so naïve that I didn’t realise I should have recruited sponsors to back me BEFORE I started losing weight.
The end result is that although my online fundraising stood at the start of this week at 25 per cent more than my original £500 target, I probably missed out on double that amount through my lack of fundraising skills.
But CICRA, the Crohn’s in Children Research Association, are about to get a big surprise, thanks to my amazing friends Dee Williams and Susan Reader and the unbelievable support of an expat community whose generosity knows no bounds.
Susan, one of the Costa’s most prolific voluntary fundraisers, and Dee – who runs Bar Sofia in El Raso,- decided to give a boost to my uninspiring efforts to fill CICRA’s coffers. I didn’t ask them to help…they formed their own Daisy chain and plated it with gold in the form of a Charity Walk and Fun Day
I had expected perhaps half a dozen sad souls to take part in the short 2.5km walk and perhaps a dozen to come along to the subsequent activities at Sofia’s.
There were five times that number, with dozens more thronging Sofia’s for the fashion show and commercial mini market that followed. The Walk and Fun Day, plus raffle and other ‘extras’, have already generated a staggering €1,200 plus…and the money is still coming in.
The bottom line is that the £759.93 I have raised for CICRA in sponsorship and gift aid is about to rocket to more than £2,000 even if nothing more comes in before I complete my diet on June 30.
Some €500 of this latest cash injection came from two sources….€200 from the now defunct El Raso Neighbourhood Watch, for which I thank Barbara Roebuck and Tony Bowhey in particular, and an unbelievable €300 collected personally by my neighbours Marie and Colin Whitfield. Ever-helpful and ever-willing, the golden hearted couple’s wad of sponsorship forms included the name of just about every soul on the urbanisation.
As I write, my Just Giving charity page shows only the £759.93 contributed to CICRA by sponsors of my diet. Sunday’s jackpot will be added in the next few days but I doubt that will be the end of it… because the philanthropy of the expat community seems to know no bounds.
Just keep checking www.justgiving.com/donna-gee and you’ll see what I mean…
