Now that our fundraising events for 2016 are finished I wanted, not only express our gratitude to everyone who has donated, but also share our achievements. So far, at the time of writing, I’m pleased to report that our grand total is sitting at £2,063!
So let me tell you about our events this year; firstly at the beginning of July Henry’s daddy and a friend of mine stepped in at the last minute to join the Oliver Fisher Dragon Boat team at Mote Park, they had great fun and we may even look into putting our own team together next year.
August was our busiest month in terms of fundraising; Henry’s nanny, who works in the Post Office in Maidstone, managed to get her team involved with raising money by dressing up as babies for the day when they celebrated their move into WHSmiths. The team raised a total of £201.53 which is going to be matched by the Post Office too!
The end of August saw our main event which was the 5k run at Capstone Park. This proved to be a tough track with a huge hill at the end and although myself and Henry’s Grandma had intended to run the whole course the final hill finished us off, meaning we had to walk the last few hundred metres! Runners on the day were Henry’s cousins, Paige and Summah in the children’s race, then his other cousin Faith, mummy, grandma, nanny, auntie and friends in the main race.
The following week saw the Bliss and Oliver Fisher Superhero walk in Mote Park; we joined a group of other parents and toddlers who were previous residents on the unit around a year before us. We were very touched that Henry was given the role of starting off the walk as he was the littlest superhero there! Here he is in action:
Next came Henry’s christening and in terms of gifts there wasn’t anything we particularly needed so we put the following note in with the invitations:
As a result, we received over £350 in donations from our wonderfully generous friends and family, and were still given some lovely gifts on top! Henry’s just in the process of making his ‘thank you’ cards at the moment
So that’s it for the fundraising for now, we’re not planning on venturing out too much over the winter months in hopes of keeping Henry away from any nasty bugs, but more on that later!
In addition to the fundraising events, we did gain a little extra through fellow teacher donations from readers of my other website (www.interactiveclassroom.net), after sharing our story there we gained an extra £70. Kevin has also recently developed a mobile app for use with his electric unicycle (yes, you did read that right!), he’s attracted quite a few users of his app and received a $100 donation in recognition of his work.
We also gained some publicity for our cause in some of the local Kent newspapers which you can read by clicking the images below:
We’ll be back with more fundraising in 2017 once the winter season is over so watch this space! I’m hoping to organise a cake sale with some fellow NICU mums in the Spring as well as participating in the 5k run again amongst other things. Thank you, once again, to everybody who has contributed. If you haven’t donated yet and would like to, click the link below:
