Its the 18th of December and exactly 3 weeks until I fly out to Zimbabwe. Fundraising is now complete having handed in my final cheque for £50 during the weekend! I had been writing a blog on a different site but people were having trouble accessing it and so here is my shiny new blog!
It has been quite an experience so far since the 23rd of October, I haven’t been away yet but I already feel I have gained a lot. It seems ages since I sat at Victoria Coach station planning out all the ideas of how I would raise the money should I get the position. When I received the email the following day I felt confident that my numerous plans would succeed and set about planning things straight away. I am now glad that I wasn’t so confident in my plans that I left them to the last minute as I soon started to realise that not everyone was as enthusiastic about fundraising as I was – or rather were too enthusiastic about raising money for other causes. I had hoped to run a presentation and possible non-uniform day at my old high school – but having put in several requests to meet with a member of staff to discuss this I eventually gave up on hearing from them, similarily I wrote to countless businesses and rotary clubs but to no avail.
I did have a few solid plans in the making however, a sponsored swim was a definite (seen as water sports are the only sports I can claim to be ok at) and I wanted to do something embarrassing – the pyjama week ticked that box. I was blown away the first day of handing my sponsor around work, with a total of over £300 pledged by my co-workers – over the weeks this rose to about 400. Although this was amazing I still had £400 to raise – and with so many events, poppy day, children in need and the local save our suzie, this was starting to seem rather daunting. Instead of writing to local businesses I printed off some copies of my letter of authority and spent a couple of days trailing about shops for prizes and ended up with 22 which lead to a successful raffle, adding to the total.
2 weeks to go and I still had roughly £300 to find, I still had a lot of pledge money to collect but with Christmas around the corner people were starting to struggle. There were a few days where I really lost confidence, that despite me telling everyone that things were going to be fine, mentally I was preparing myself for failure. Deciding that I couldn’t give up, a change of mindset really helped.
A last minute push (and a lot of help from mum) with a christmas fete at my old work place, Alexander House as well as a cheque from the directors there followed by a collection at St Serfs Church I was very close to hitting my target. Thanks to my Dad, Martyn appealing to his friends both near and far my total kept rising, and after appealing to my facebook friends I finally hit that target.
It was quite a feat, and something I just could not a have done myself! An obvious massive thanks to all those who supported me with a donation, an equal massive thanks to those friends and family who helped – whether it be simple moral support and not letting me give up or the actual help, handing sponsor forms out, counting lengths, walking round selling raffle tickets and putting up with me when my alter-ego appeared when things got stressful!
Jen Hall in Zimbabwe 