I have now hit my target!! So how did i do it?!

What a relief to see that 100% on my website! I cant quite believe that i managed it, but here i am with the hardest bit over ;-) ready and raring to go!

so...as i'm enjoying writing my little stories I thought that I would write a little bit (well...i'll try to write a little bit, but being the chatterbox that i am, it may be a little more!) about how i managed to achieve my target.

First and foremost there was the kindness and generosity of friends, family and also employees at Reckitt Benckiser who hardly knew me! Not to mention the people I spent 5 days on a Health and Safety course with! Thanks to Mary, Jen and Paul, who got the ball rolling with their very generous donations :-) Always a lot of pressure on the first to be generous!

Madeleine and I got on the case with other fundraising ideas pretty much straight away and came up with:

Putting collection boxes in the coffee shop

This has provided us with a steady flow of donations over the last 7 months or so.

The Sodexho Indian Themed Meal

This was a fantastically successful event where we persuaded Reckitt Benckiser to pay for Sodexho to hold an Indian themed lunchtime in the staff canteen, for which all sales landed on our websites! We couldn't believe that it was all being donated to us, we expected just the profits! We did a lot of promotion for the event, which was held during Save the Children week (cunning eh?!) and then decorated the canteen with balloons and banners on the day. We stood and flashed our smiles at people as they were picking up their trays...not sure if this helped or not....but i think it did! Oh and also one of the guys who worked in the canteen was a DJ (happy coincidence!) so brought in his equipment and erm....interesting music collection (mostly 80's cheese if i remember rightly!) which perked up the diners too! We raised a whopping £240 each from this!

Crazy Hat Day

Another event held during Save the Children week (yes the people of RB Hull do hate us!) I believe that this was one of my crazy ideas, a little different to a dress down day...and I have to say, much more fun! We asked people to come to work in a crazy hat (or just a hat!) on this day and pay us for the privilege :-) Madeleine and I made our hats for the day out of witches hats...and i bet you cant guess what we made them in to?...yes you've got it....Mountains! They were great i have to say! We had a lot of good hats worn and although there wasn't a huge percentage of hat wearers wandering around we did raise £81.15 each! I do think that a lot of our donations were from people who were guilted into it due to the lack of headwear!

Following this event we received a lovely email to tell us that the Sales and Marketing team had hosted a 'dress down day' instead of 'crazy hat day' and had a donation of £35 for us!

Easter Cake Sale

As it was Easter, and it is the law to eat chocolate at this happy time ;-) we decided to don our aprons and knock together some Easter buns...these comprised chocolate cornflakes/coco pops/all bran to make little nests, which housed a few mini eggs...how sweet! They went down very well and we sold out! From this we raised £32.27 each!

From this event we also drummed up a bit of extra cake selling business...we received an offer of £35 each to make some more buns for a meeting held by Stuart Shaw in Sales and Marketing...which we did!

Veet Product Sale

We were given a huuuuuge load of Veet products which we were told we could sell in order to raise money for our charity...so we did! We set ourselves up in the canteen (following an interesting experience with a dumb waiter!) and asked for donations for the products. These flew out, which raised an extra £87.63 for us!

Body Shop Fundraiser

My wonderful mum held a body shop party, where she promoted my event and managed to get £35 from a raffle and donations from friends :-)

Harpic Sales

Mike in NTG decided to ask for donations for some harpic products that were going as swag, which raised £3.72 each!

Hen do dares

Whilst out on a hen do in "fame" costume I made myself a little bit from doing dares...Pauline, my netball coach convinced people to give money for me to be daft (which i am fine with!)...i raised £9 from doing the splits and running across the dance floor and doing a "fame leap"!

Grand National Sweepstake

The lovely Mary Pratt organised a Grand National Sweepstake and donated the money to me...thanks Mary! This got me £27!

Cricket World Cup Sweepstake

Using an idea given to me very kindly by Madeleine i organised a sweepstake for the cricket world cup...this raised £20!


I think that's about it, as well as the Summer Ball and Netball tournament. I hope you've enjoyed reading...it was certainly fun doing most of this!

I will post some photo's as soon as i can :-)

My Netball Tournament!

I'm afraid as it took me so long to start this blog malarky, i am talking about events in reverse order! So...



15th July - my netball tournament.



With the help of my wonderful netball coach Pauline amongst others, I organised a morning of netball fun. I had 9 teams enter (including two teams from Reckitt Benckiser), who each donated £15 entry fee. These were mostly put straight onto my website, apart from a couple which payed for the hire of the courts (with the teams permission of course!). I should maybe mention that Dave Windley at the university sports centre very kindly let me have half price hire of the courts to help me out with the fundraising :-) Anyway...along with teams that we play in county and works leagues we had two teams come all the way from Unilever in the Wirral (I hope i have spelt that right?!) to play! They paricularly enjoyed the day and suggested that I organise one every year (perhaps because noone stood a chance against them!), but this was very good feedback and something i will definately consider!



Despite it being a very dull and wet day, everyone seemed to enjoy themselves and I had some lovely raffle prizes donated by teams and individuals. The raffle was to raise money towards the trek generally, so this money went towards my vaccinations and equipment, which was a huge help! I raised a lot overall from the day so was very pleased that I had got my act together and organised it :-)

The day raised £164 which was fantastic!

I will post a few photo's of the event soon...

Reckitt Benckiser Summer Ball

On 19th August it was our biggest fundraiser so far...the summer ball! Madeleine and I got involved in the organising of this annual event this year to generate more money for Save the Children. Each year the money raised from the event is donated to save the children as part of Reckitt Benckiser's save 100000 lives campaign, however, this year, the money went through our websites to the charity and i'm very happy to say that this helped me to achieve my target! yey! After lots of hard work put in my myself, Madeleine and Kerry (the annual organiser) the ball took place and was a huge success! An extra even that we added this year was Madeleine and I putting ourselves in stocks (made very kindly by my fantastic dad) to have wet sponges thrown at us! We thought it best to do this at the end of the night to catch people in their most generous state (post alcohol). Unfortunately some people were having far too much fun to hear the DJ announce that we were outside (at Ramada Jarvis, Willerby) in stocks, but the people that did find us were very generous (or mean!) and helped to raise £35.10 from the event!

We held a raffle, which was very successful and through the donation of many great prizes by companies such as Costco, JJB, The Deep, Hollywood Bowl, Cannons Health Club and many more, we raised a fair few pennies! Total yet to be confirmed!

So..enjoy the photos!

More pictures from Training weekend

Training Weekend in Crowden - 18-19th August

This weekend i was in Crowden in the Peak District for a training weekend organised by Classic Tours. I travelled there with Madeleine (who is also taking part in the challenge and with whom i have done the majority of my fundraising events..please have a read of her blog as she set it up aaaages ago and has actually got lots of good stuff on there already! Her site is http://madeleinechadwick.blogspot.com/ ) Anyway...we arrived not really knowing what to expect but looking forward to meeting some of the other people chosen for the trek. We met Anand Sharma, Chris Briggs, Seema Sardana and Mark Astill (Hi guys if you're reading!). All very nice people i should add! As it turned out we also met one of our guides, Julian, who led us on the walks this weekend. He seemed very nice and seemed to know what he was doing which reassured me! Then there was the lovely Emma from Save The Children, she will also be coming with us on the trek and having lived in India for a year, has lots of good advice and stories to tell!

So...we spent the day walking over the peaks on Saturday, which was the telling day for me as i was wearing my new walking boots for the first time! I'm extremely happy to say that they were wonderful and a spiffing purchase (even if i do say so myself!), so light and comfortable! It rained for most of the day too so that was a good opportunity to test out my new "trekking gear" which also passed with flying colours (My trousers...what a fantastic buy...poor Madeleine was very patient with me as i expressed my joy with their magic ability to repel water every 5 minutes or so!) The day was a good chance to get to know the guys mentioned above, this was really good and filled me with confidence that the trek will be a thoroughly enjoyable experience! In the evening Julian very kindly went on a tesco run for booze...really, what sort of youth hostel doesn't have a bar! I could hardly believe that he suggested the idea considering we were there for a weekend of exercise! What a great way to spend the evening after a day in the rain..i very much enjoyed the banter, although I perhaps shouldn't have had enjoyed the wine so much...but hey, at the time it was great!

Unfortunately Sunday was cut a little short as the hills were foggy up top and the guides thought it best to stay low and go for a shorter walk. I was amazed by the scenery (again, sorry Madeleine for going on about it!) I will certainly be venturing back out there! So, after a lunch back at the hostel we all said our "goodbye"s and "good luck"s and went our seperate ways. Needless to say, I had a fantastic time and found the experience very enlightening. The morale of the group was inspiring, such lovely people all keen to get out there and make a difference. There were a fair few trips and stumbles along the way but cheery faces were always to be seen in all directions! Well done troop!