So if you read my blog, you will know that I am a mentor with the charity
Caring Cancer Trust. This charity has given me so much, that it has always been my mission to give it back.
On my 16th birthday, I asked for no presents or partys or anything and I just asked for the money that would have been spent on presents and celebrations to go straight to the charity, so they got around £300.
However, I still didn't think that was near enough to pay them back for the opportunities they have given me..
So on Tuesday 3rd June, me and my family held a charity fundraising night at the
Akash Indian Restaurant, Albert Road, Southsea, Portsmouth to try and raise some more money for the charity.
A few months back, me and a group of girls held a similar night there for another charity and raised around £500 so because it was such a successful night, I decided it would be great to arrange a charity night there for my own charity. I was determined to at least double that £500, and you'll find out if I did later on.. ;)
The owner of the Akash agreed to £12 a ticket, £9 to them for the food on the night and £3 towards the charity. That was a very good deal too!
So that was our first step, to sell as many tickets as possible.
Our second step was to contact local businesses asking for donations towards our raffle that we were holding on the night which went very well! We got some fantastic prizes including an oven, hob and extractor set worth £400, the hire of a Range Rover for a long weekend, a Range Rover Mountain Bike worth a few hundred pounds, 2 tickets to Goodwood Racecourse and Goodwood Revival, some free gym memberships and a few other little bits and bobs.
The night came around VERY quickly!
Once everyone had arrived, I did a small speech over a microphone to thank everyone for coming and tell them everything that was happening on the night including that they were able to buy raffle tickets later on and they had the chance to have their picture taken with a replica FA Cup and Olympic Torch courtesy of the staff at Akash!
After I had said my bit, I asked someone else to talk, a special someone else. One of the ski instrcutors that come on the holiday, Dean, had travelled down on his own, a long way, to be there on the night to support! So I asked him to tell the people what the charity meant to him and he told it fantastically.
Once the speeches had been done, me and my dad went round selling raffle tickets for £1 a strip. We had bought 3 books of raffle tickets so we had plenty, but by the time we got to the very very last lady, we were only able to offer her one strip because thats all we had left! The books had completely been sold out!
Over the rest of the night, a large number of curry dishes, rices, naan bread, poppadoms and dips were bought out for everyone to try and enjoy. The food was absoloutely fantastic!
The highlight of my night was a man named Roy.
Roy is a regular at the Akash and he had come in about half a hour after we had started to sit down and eat a curry, however, there was no where for him to sit beause we had packed the restaurant out! So he was forced to have a takeaway. I walked past him at some point whilst he was waiting for his curry and he stopped me, I had never ever met him before, he was a complete stranger to us all, and asked me what was going on so I told him all about the charity and what we were aiming to do that night. He then asked to make a donation so he left to go to the bank to get some money out for us and came back with a whole £50!
That was amazing enough, but he didn't stop. After he had finished his takeaway, he came back to the restaurant with yet another £50 to donate! £100 in total! I was absoloutely amazed!
Safe to say that my faith in humanity was restored that night thanks to Roy.
It was then time to hold our raffle. As Roy was keen to get more involved, he drew the tickets out from the box and handed them to me for me to read out.
Everything was going so well and then one ticket was drawn and we called it out three different times, but no one claimed to have that ticket. At the end of the raffle once all the prizes had gone, Dean come to me and showed me that he had that ticket all along and it was just hidden under his other tickets! Not only that, but whatever he won he was going to auction right there and then to get more money for the charity! What an amazing thing to do!
The night was an absoloutely massive success and after counting out all the money (from tickets, raffle tickets, grabbing peoples spare change at the end of the night) we had raised a wopping £1244.64!
All that is down to everyone who turned up on the night, bought tickets, paid for raffle tickets (even if they didn't win anything) and gave extra donations. We couldn't have done it without them!
I also couldn't have organised this night and half of the amazing raffle prizes we had without the help of my family, especially my mum, dad and sister, so they deserve a massive thankyou too!
Something like this is such an easy and small thing to do as long as you are willing to talk to people to firstly ask to use their restaurant and secondly to try and get raffle prizes. Even though its a small thing, so much money is raised and it all goes such a long way!
So if you are a keen fundraiser and you'd love to do something like this to raise money for a charity close to your heart, go and do it! Don't be afraid to ask! Like my dad says to me, unless people are interested, they only thing people can say is no. Don't let that stop you, there are thousands of other people and places out there that will say a massive yes!
I'm not going to stop here, so keep an eye out for future fundraising things I get up to!
So if you do decide to do something like this, I hope it goes well for you!
You can always let me know how it goes in the comments below!
Ill leave you with some pictures from the night!
xx
