Fundraising Update For Tanzania

It’s been a couple of months since Brigette came home to announce her intentions of going to Tanzania this summer (2017). She’s had a lot of love and support from family and friends and our wonderful community and I wanted to give you a fundraising update for Tanzania and her ME to WE trip.The first fundraising campaign we did was selling cookies. The inspiration, oh hell, we down right stole the idea from my friend Sarah over at Doing All The Things. Sarah and her girls pick a charity or cause every year and do a bake sale to raise money. This year they very kindly chose Brigette’s trip as their cause and made heart shaped cookies. Selling them at $5 per bag of three cookies made over $500 virtually overnight. Once Sarah’s cookies sold out, we decided to do our own cookie sale in the same format and sell thru our friends on my Facebook page.Enlisting the help of our resident baking expert, Nana, we bought the supplies and Brigette and I spent the day at Nana’s house making 300 cookies. We were a machine, making batches of dough to chill in the fridge, rolling out, cutting, baking, cooling, icing and bagging.It took us 10 hours to get 100 bags of cookies prepped for sale. Once I posted the cookies for sale on Facebook, we were sold out of all 100 bags within 24 hours! The following few days were spent delivering all the bags and collecting money. We even had some people from out of town “buy” several bags of cookies and of course, not expect delivery of their cookies so we were able to sell them again. The total for Brigette’s cookie sale made $575!The second fundraising campaign we did was a bottle drive. Again, the wonderful Sarah and her family suggested we utilize the use of a huge cube trailer they purchased for a cross country move for the collection of bottles. Perfect! On a chilly Sunday we drove out to Airdrie. Picked a neighbourhood and started ringing doorbells. In a short 2.5 hours we collected enough bottles that cashed in almost $400! We truly can’t thank Sarah and her family enough!So between Sarah’s cookie sale, Brigette’s cookie sale and the bottle drive, along with other donations made directly to Brigette’s CrowdRise page, her grand total as of February 28, 2017 is $2685!For those keeping track, that’s just a little less than half of the cost of the ME to WE trip itself! We’ve set her goal at $7500 to cover things like insurance, supplies, round trip flight to Toronto (to meet the flight to Africa) and spending money. She’s got a long way to go but we couldn’t be prouder of her and her efforts.

Stay tuned!