Back in action

Having let it languish for the past month, I am finally getting my fund-raising act in gear again (that’s not to say that I’ve just been lazy this past month – the lovely Louise came down to visit for a week from Glasgow, and I – finally – bought a motorbike, my last great expenditure before saving all the coppers for Guyana).

I found out a while ago – much to my surprise – that I was not, in fact, the only person from my year at school to be taking a gap year through Project Trust: my friend Ross will be going to Chile to teach English, at the same time as I go to Guyana. Since he is equally as far behind on the fund-raising front, we’ve banded together in mutual motivation, and it’s already paying off: I’ve at last produced my (full-colour, double-sided) leaflet, and we have begun to put into action some plans we’ve discussed for fund-raising events. These are at varying degrees of readiness, but so far they are:

• Selling home-made muffins and brownies at school, for 50p each. We made snazzy posters to put up around the school, and in the next few days are going to approach the local Sainsbury’s to see if they might donate some baked goods – it’s worth a try.


• Running a raffle at the school Christmas fair; I think that a first prize of a Magnum bottle of champagne would be attractive enough to make plenty of people enter, and cover the cost, and we’ll try approaching the local Odd Bins or Bottoms Up to see if they’ll donate it or any wine.


• Laying on a black-tie ball (~£15 a ticket) for our friends and their friends and their friends’ friends etc. at the very start of the Christmas holidays. A friend of ours recently returned from her gap year, and she did the same to great success, and has very kindly offered to give us advice on that front. We’ve decided on the venue, and since, helpfully, we know the owners of it personally, we might try approaching them to see if we could save some money on that front. Similarly, since I work in an ice cream café which often provides ice cream for the college balls around Oxford, I’ll try asking them if they’ll donate some ice cream for it.

More fun to come as things progress, but once this all gets started, hopefully there won’t be many more lethargic months like this last one.