Raising funds for the Red Cross War Memorial Children's Hospital - Cape Town, South Africa

In 2009 my young grandson, Tristan, suffered burns to his upper body and was treated in the phenomenal Burns Unit at the Red Cross War Memorial Children’s Hospital in Cape Town. It was an extremely traumatising experience for us all and introduced us to the reality faced by so many sick children and their families who have to deal with this kind of trauma.

We are so grateful for the wonderful care and support Tristan received at the Hospital from doctors and medical staff that we decided, as a family, that it would be fitting for us to be able to give back in some way. I’ve therefore committed to climb Mount Kilimanjaro in July 2010 and will attempt to raise much needed funds for the Hospital.

100% of money I raise will be allocated directly to upgrade the Burns Unit - every cent donated to the Hospital Trust will directly benefit the Hospital.

Ultimately, the purpose of this project is to raise funds for an extremely deserving cause. I have given a personal guarantee to match the amount I must raise in sponsorships in the form of financial donations to the Trust.

I am very excited about being able to make a difference and sincerely hope you will be able to come on board with me in helping to get other sick children back home where they belong!



This is how you can get involved....

DONATE A SKILL

If you have a skill that you would like to 'donate' instead of money, this slot is for you.

I will create an event around what you have to offer and 100% of what people pay to attend will be donated to the hospital.

The hair spa day held in March at the Wayne.com salon at the One and Only Hotel is an example of such an event. We were able to raise R5250 on that day.

PLEDGES

Kilimanjaro is 5895m high. You can decide to pledge a certain amount per meter that I climb. You can email your pledges to me at: ferreira@netpoint.co.za OR you can download a pledge page from the section on the right of this page and fax it to me.

If you can't pledge yourself, how about getting your company to pledge and to perhaps even challenge other companies to match or better their pledge!!

DONATE ONLINE OR BY BANK DEPOSIT

On the right hand side of the blog, near the top, there is a section that includes a direct link to the hospital's website.

Read all the directions before clicking on the link, it is important for the hospital to be able to allocate your donation correctly.

The hospital trust will issue a tax certificate for any donation over R100, so that's an extra bonus for both individuals and companies!

AUCTION

I am currently collecting goods to offer on an auction to be held later this year - anything that we can turn into money is welcome!

Just to give you a sample of some of the things we have at this stage: three TOP NOTCH bottles of South African wines, compliments of Janet Malherbe, and five signed copies of a book written by the adventurer and master fundraiser David Grier!

For more info on David: http://www.davidgrier.co.za/

I'd love to be able to offer nights away at wonderful places in our country, romantic dinners at special restaurants etc. So if you have any connections or have something that you can offer yourself, I'd love to hear from you!

Just to make double sure you have my contact details - here it is again: ferreira@netpoint.co.za





Tristan enjoying being a healthy, happy little boy!


my blog entries

Will try and update on a regular basis!! :)

Sunday, July 11, 2010

10 Days to go!!!!

The countdown has begun! Ten days before the big day - I can't believe how the time has flown!
This has been a busy week, Tristan turned two on Friday and it's my dad's birthday today. So we had loads of celebrating at our house this weekend - I have definitely done my bit to fatten up for the big climb these last two days! I've also done a bit of shopping, slowly but surely my Kili supplies are stacking up. On Friday I went for my yellow fever shot, thank goodness that's out of the way! I also decided to get malaria tablets. I'm not keen on them as I want to take as little medication as possible, other than the altitude sickness tablets. However, I decided that taking a chance with malaria is simply not worth it.

Here are some of the goodies I added to my stock this weekend....


My cholera and yellow fever certificates - valid for 10 years, thank goodness; headlamp; Diamox for altitude sickness; malaria tablets; fleece top and Kili waterbottles.

The waterbottles survived being thrown down Table Mountain, so hopefully they'll work well on Kilimanjaro. I debated quite a bit about how much I wanted to spend on a headlamp but finally decided to go for a Petzl with multifunctions - a little more expensive but I think that this is one piece of equipment that you can spend some money on. After reading some of the accounts of the summit night on our route, I want to be sure I can see as much as I can! As we summit at midnight, it will be essential to have a good headlamp. It should be full moon on the night that we attempt that final stretch, hopefully it will be a clear, beautiful night!

As for the weekend celebrations, my little grandson is now two, it feels like yesterday that we were all eagerly waiting to meet him for the first time! We had a BUSY morning with a house full of little ones running around!


This is MY day!

Tristan is in his 'car' phase, so his mom and dad chose to have this as the theme for his party - this is one car that didn't last long!


Posing is hard work!

As for the hiking this week - Thursday was my last day on the mountain. From now on I plan to focus my training in the gym. I think my legs need to rest a little now, so I'm going to just stick to a comfortable pace these last ten days. On Thursday we hiked up Table Mountain from the Camps Bay side. It was a glorious day and the view of Camps Bay and Lions Head was spectacular. We met loads of people on the way, when the the sun is out in Cape Town more and more people seem to be heading up the mountain!

Here are some of our pics, some taken by Jean, one of my fellow hikers. Thanks Jean!


Can't beat this view!


Denise, Irene, Stefani, David and I


Maclear's Beacon, the highest point on Table Mountain. I guess that's as high as  I've been then! 5895m seems really scary at this point!


Just another winter's day in Cape Town!

And finally - soccer fever is still very much alive in our city. I spotted this little guy playing with his soccer ball at Greenmarket Square and just couldn't resist taking about a million pictures of him!



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1 comment:

  1. ConnieJuly 12, 2010 at 10:42 AM

    What a beautiful view. Love the little boy with the soccer ball :-)

    ReplyDelete

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