Dress Down raises £101

At my work - BNY Mellon - we have a Charity Dress Down Day once a month. Employees are encouraged on this particular Friday to come to work in the jeans or casual clothes and pay £1 for the privilege, this money raised that day is then given to a charity nominated by an employee and vetted by our Community Partnership Committee. It is so popular that there is now a waiting list extending to next Spring to get your chosen charity on board. Having been on the waiting list for some time it was WaterAid's turn this month, along with 2 charities nominated by my colleagues Katrina and Fiona. Fiona was raising money for Action Medical Research by completing a challenge known as "Race the Sun" down in the Lake District and Katrina has recently completed a half marathon for a charity close to her heart - The Histiocytosis Research Trust. Both girls were keen to raise additional funds for the charities and so we arranged to work together and split the proceeds equally. Fiona got to work making posters for our day to raise awareness of our charities and remind people to participate on the day. 

On the day Katrina and I donned our charity T-shirts and set about the office rattling our buckets! I asked Katrina to cover our floor as after my sponsorship form doing the rounds and my cake sales I was rather embarrassed to be asking for more money even when it's for such a good cause! While she was doing that I covered the 2nd floor and we then covered the remaining floors together. We also asked some colleagues at our other office on Lothian Road to help us out and were delighted when they agreed. In total £303 was raised from the two offices, resulting in £101 each, we were delighted! Thanks to Craig on the CPP committee for taking responsibility for counting it all up for us and thanks to each and every colleague who supported us with this event! 

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Why am I trekking for Water?

Imagine life without water flowing freely from a tap. Imagine waking up at dawn and spending up to six hours fetching water for your family’s needs. One in eight people worldwide do not have to imagine this life – it is their reality.

 

In rural Africa women often walk for up to ten miles to fetch water. The tragedy is that, having spent so much effort reaching a water source, the water itself is often dirty, polluted and unsafe to drink.

The daily burden of collecting water prevents women from working and children from going to school. Worse still, diseases like diarrhoea and dysentery caused by unsafe water and poor sanitation result in the deaths of 4,000 children every day.

WaterAid believes that access to safe water and sanitation underpins health, education and livelihoods, and forms the first, essential step in overcoming poverty.

 

Sponsor me today, your money will make a big difference to those in need:

 

 

£12 could pay for 2 taps for a village water point

 

£18 could pay for pipes for a gravity-flow scheme

£19 could pay for water Point Mapping for four water points

£20 could train a pump attendant

 

£25 could buy tools to dig a well

£100 could buy a tapstand for a gravity-flow scheme

 

Help me to help WaterAid transform lives through sustainable water, sanitation and hygiene projects.

Sponsor me today at: www.justgiving.com/trekforwater2013 

 

Huge thanks to all who have already supported me and to those who promised, well there's no time like the present! :-)

 

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Info taken from WaterAid's Fundraising toolkit

@ www.wateraid.org/uk/get-involved/start-fundraising#/fundraising-ideas

Not just a donation, a M&S donation...

With my charity challenge looming ever closer I have been writing to some of our best known and well-loved retailers in the hope that someone will sponsor me to complete my daunting challenge for WaterAid.... I was in luck with Marks and Spencer!

 

M&S have a strong tradition of Corporate Social Responsibility and this can be seen in their commitment to environmental sustainability and charitable giving, e.g. Breakthrough Breast Cancer clothing and Oxfam's clothes recycling initiative. Moreover individual stores are keen to support local charities and local fundraising endeavours, particularly those which they believe will make a lasting contribution. In support of my own fundraising for WaterAid M&S on Princes Street, here in Edinburgh, have very kindly made a one-off donation of £25 in the form of a giftcard. Although I had the options to raffle this off as a prize or use it to buy produce for my next event I have decided to transfer the amount of £25 from my bank account onto my Just Giving site for WaterAid and spend the £25 instead. This way WaterAid will benefit from the £25 and I get to do what I do best... shop! <g> With M&S' contribution I have now raised a fantastic £3060!!!

 

I would like to thank Eddie, Caroline and all the staff on the Edinburgh Store Committee for their support, kind donation and words of encouragement in their recent letter. I really appreciate it and look forward to my next visit to your store.

 

Marks and Spencer - "Quality worth every penny!"

 

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Turning wine into water!

In addition to sponsorship I am always dreaming up new and exciting ways to fundraise and my latest brainwave was a wine-tasting soiree coupled with some fine cheeses, music and entertainment. Due to the popularity of the Edinburgh festival however it proved difficult to find a venue to accommodate me, with this in mind I decided to host the event in my flat but the downside to this was that I couldn't really advertise. We have all heard the facebook horror stories of homes being gate-crashed by reckless teenagers! Plus realistically I didn't think my living room could hold more than about 20 people, comfortably anyway!

Due to my diary for September already filling up and acknowledging the fact that I had yesterday off work to prepare I decided to host my event last night. The general response to my invitations was that it was a great idea and wine and cheese seemed to be up everyone's alley! Unfortunately quite a few couldn't make the date due to family commitments and/or festival plans but those who did come made it a fabulous night and I would do it all again in a heartbeat! Particular thanks go to Michelle and Ali for helping me serve my guests and to my partners Raeburn Fine Wines, Henderson Wines and Henri's of Edinburgh for donating their fabulous produce!

From the offset I knew that to maximise the amount of money I could raise I needed to reduce my costs and so I wrote to a few of my favourite wine merchants in the city. I was in luck, two kind companies were sympathetic to my request and surprised me by the extent of their generosity. Mr Mohammad of Raeburn Fine Wines very kindly donated 6 bottles of Red wine and 6 bottles of white as did Mr David Henderson of Henderson Wines.

Both gentlemen were incredibly helpful and knowledgeable about wine and are major importers of wines from some of the greatest wine estates in the world. To me drinking wine should be an experience, a pleasure, a privilege - to drink and to share. The wines these merchants donated were exactly that.

If you are anything like me you won’t be able to resist a nice piece of cheese to go with your glass of wine. It is impossible for me to consider hosting a wine soiree without offering a selection of wonderful cheeses and so I approached my favourite French Delicatessen, Henri of Edinburgh. With weekly deliveries from the markets of Paris to their two Edinburgh shops, Henri’s stocks the widest range of artisanal French cheese in Scotland. I was so excited to share some of their delicious cheeses with my friends last night and if you haven’t been before strongly recommend you pay Henri of Edinburgh a visit either in Stockbridge or Morningside. You won’t be disappointed! My french friend Veronique can vouch for the quality of the cheese as she tucked in earnestly to the cheese of her homeland!Just to whet your appetites here are some tasting notes from the fabulous cheeses we devoured last night:

Brie de Melun: Smaller than the famous earthy Brie de Meaux, but much stronger and saltier.

Selles Sur Cher: Fantastic Loire goats cheese. Dense and creamy paste when young, matures to a cracking complex and firm cheese.

Bleu des Causses: Cows milk blue from the Languedoc, sometimes known as "Poor Mans Roquefort". This is rich and fruity, without the sharp ewe's milk edge that Roquefort has.

Abbaye de Belloc: Creamy and subtle, firm ewes milk cheese from the Pyrenees. Made by Monks!

Perail des Cabasses: Also from the Languedoc, Individual ewes milk cheese with is creamy and sweet but intensifies the more mature it gets.

Abondance: Firm, nutty and sweet Alpine cows milk from the Savoie.

Membrillo: Spanish quince paste, great with the blue and ewes milk cheeses.

 

These were all served with an assortment of oatcakes, wafers, crackers and freshly baked bread and went down a treat! The Membrillo quince was a fantastic accompaniment, going well with all the cheeses and will soon be flying off the shelves at Henri's, I am sure!

Teaming up with these wonderful partners my “Last of the Summer Wine” soiree was a fantastic evening! The format was fairly casual with a cocktail party style but to give some structure I started the evening with a short film about WaterAid and then gave a brief seminar on how to appreciate wine along with instructions on how to taste and rate the wine. To kick the taste-buds into action guests were first asked to taste pepsi and diet pepsi, tonic and slimline tonic, tap water and bottled water and to guess which was which in each category. We then moved onto the wine, with taste trials involving Chardonnay versus Sauvignon Blanc and Shiraz versus Pinot Noir amongst others. Things got even more exciting with the blindfold test when everyone had the opportunity to taste a white wine and a rose blindfolded and guess which was which. Easier said than done! lol A the end of the taste trials everyone added up their scores and the winner of the most discerning palate was Linda, who won a lovely bottle of wine (what else! ;-)) We then had wee raffle with a few Body Shop and wine gifts on offer including the star prize of a bottle of bubbly, courtesy of my favourite local - Victoria on Leith walk. Thanks so much to Hannah for the donation, sure it won't be long till I am back in for a pint!

I think it's fair to say everyone really enjoyed their evening and by turning our wine into water there was never a greater reason to indulge! With a few extra donations included from friends who bought tickets but couldn't make the event I raised £98 last night and this will go towards supplying safe drinking water to those in need! Thank you so, so much to all who donated produce and to all who came, I couldn't have done it without you and thanks to your support I have now surpassed my £3000 milestone, raising £3015 in total and hitting 75% of my target! www.justgiving.com/trekforwater2013.
 

To buy any of the wine or cheese we sampled last night or to try something new just click on the links below. All 3 have fantastic reputations in the city and are well worth a visit, I for one will be back!

www.henderson-wines.co.uk

 

MORNINGSIDE				ROSEBURN
109 Comiston Road Morningside, Edinburgh				23 Roseburn Terrace Edinburgh

 www.raeburnfinewines.com

COMELY BANK				LEITH (Cellars & Tasting)
21/23 Comely Bank Road Edinburgh EH4 1DS				The Vaults,  4 Giles Street, Edinburgh EH6 6DJ

 

www.henrisofedinburgh.co.uk/shop/index.php
 

MORNINGSIDE				STOCKBRIDGE
376 Morningside Road Edinburgh Scotland EH10 5HX				48 Raeburn Place Edinburgh Scotland EH4 1HL

  

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August update

Good morning dear readers! Apologies for the lack of posts lately, can't believe we're approaching the end of August and I have not written a single word this month! Even more astounding is it's now less than seven weeks before my big departure! Time is flying by!

 

So to recap the past few weeks.... I had a great training session with my sister at the gym a couple of weekends ago. She was through for the festival and despite a late night and a good few drinks we managed to surface early the next morning and head to the gym. I showed her my training programme and got a few tips on some additional exercises I could do. Most helpful having a physio /marathon runner as a sibling! I even surprised myself by being able to run to and from the gym too! Granted it was only a few miles but I was still proud of myself! Unfortunately I then got a bad dose of the cold and a viral infection which pretty much floored me for the next week and  and put paid to my good intentions of increasing my gym visits! :(

 

By the following weekend at least, I had recovered and was super excited to pay a visit to the beautiful island of Arran with my best friend Laura! We had a wonderful trip away, staying in Whiting Bay and exploring the island by car and foot. I was delighted to have taken my hiking boots with me and gave them a good few outings through forests to stunning waterfalls and along coastal paths to caves of folklore and legend.

 

On our return from Arran I became a lady of leisure, having taken the week off work and have much enjoyed having time to chill out, focus on my training, visit my parents and soak up the atmosphere at the Edinburgh festival. In between all this I have continued to write to companies in the hope of securing corporate sponsorship for my challenge although it's proving difficult! Having said that I have been amazed by the generosity and support of 3 independent merchants this week who have come together to help me host my latest event, more about that in my next post!

 

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