Crabtree & Evelyn Wimbledon Centre Court Shopping Centre In Store Charity Event – 24th September
I heard about it from a support group called Caring Matters Now that I am associated with due to our son being born with a rare condition Congenital Melanocytic Neavus which has recently been discovered to be a syndrome. Caring matters now helps my son and our family to deal with this syndrome he was born with back in 2007. They also raise funds to allow the consultants at Great Ormond Street do the fantastic work they do with all CMN sufferers and research into the condition, which has been a big help towards us understanding more about CMN and how to deal with it.
C&E host charity events for small charities such as ours that is run by and full of volunteers just like myself that want to do more and haven’t a clue how. Basically they host the event print all tickets and posters, provide drinks and nibbles for the guests with a mix of their own products and items bought in, they also provided raffle prizes worth £100 for us to raffle off on the night. 50% of all ticket sales, all funds raised from the raffle and 15% of all sales on the night go to the charity and I think it is a wonderful idea and more people should know about it! This is a great way for charity event virgins to get on the ladder and gain some experience of how to go about this kind of thing.
All I had to do was contact one of my local stores and arrange a meeting with the manager and that got the ball in motion. As I said I haven’t a clue what to do and I don’t know many people so doing an event to raise awareness and funds to go towards our charity was totally out of my reach until now. The girls at C&E were fantastic they helped me feel confident that we could pull it off. I contacted business associates, friends and family to ask them to buy a ticket and we managed to sell 19 tickets in total which was 50% of what was available to me, but I was happy.
A week prior to our event I decided to try to sell a few more tickets in the local area so I approached the Wimbledon Centre Court Management Team and I spoke to a lovely lady there. She was so welcoming and happy to help in any way she could as she thought it was a great idea. She twittered the event and posted it to the centre’s Facebook page to try to raise awareness and possibly some more people would come along. She also allowed me permission to approach the stores to ask for donations for our raffle and to promote the event to their staff. I was so surprised by the response from the staff here in Wimbledon my heart has been warmed.
The evening was a success everyone had a good time, we raised some money and we are considering doing another closer to Chistmas.
I’d like to say thank you to Crabtree and Evelyn for making it all possible, especially the staff there in SW19.
Also can I say a big thank you to Debenhams, Cleo Beauty Spa, Toni and Guy and Café Moka for your donations to our raffle.
Emma
