ABC Wednesday - F

Wednesday has come round really quick!! Anyway, this week's letter is F for Fundraising.

My eldest daughter, Jedi, (for those of you who don't know) has a passion for Greyhounds and for raising awareness of their plight. Along with this comes the need to raise money to help rehome and reabilitate ex-racing Greyhounds. To find out how this passion started please read my previous post.

Anyway, once again she has the urge to Fundraise. This time she is planning a sponsered silence, not any old sponsored silence, but for a whopping 48 HOURS!!! That is quite a feat for an eleven year old!

Greyhound Rescue Wales is her chosen charity, as it is our local Greyhound charity and of course you can't support them all! We are currently waiting for GRW to register with JustGiving.com so we can make this the biggest and furthest reaching fundraising effort yet. So if you would be interested in sponsering Jedi, and helping abandoned, ill-treated or just plain unwanted Greyhounds wherever you are, please keep an eye out for a future post (hopefully within the next week) which will give details on how to find her JustGiving page. Or leave a request in the comments and I will notify you when we have the information.

Remember, this is all off the back of an eleven year old with a very big heart, nothing to do with me, I'm just the skivvy!! Please show your support, not just for the Greyhounds but for a wonderful little girl who has the want and determination to do something bigger with her time and energy.

School Summer Fair

Well yesterday was busy but successful. I will start the story a little earlier though! Last summer I had radio 2 on in the car, they did a piece on Greyhound racing and the plight of many of these graceful dogs. The figures are staggering, thousands of young dogs killed off or dumped every year when they don't make the grade, and thousands more badly treated, then abandoned or killed when they no longer run fast enough. Of course I must say that it's not all like this, some owners love their dogs deeply and take very good care of them, but more often than not it's about money not passion.

J was so touched by this story that she couldn't shift it from her already incredibly busy head. So early February, this year, she came to me, out of the blue, and said that she wanted to give her pocket money to the greyhounds. So we had a look on the net and found Greyhound Rescue Wales (GRW). Looking at their website we discovered that for £50 you could sponsor a greyhound that needed extra love and attention, either physically or psychologically, for a year. Well J doesn't get THAT mouch pocket money, so I suggested we got her school involved to see if we could raise the money and sponsor a dog.

J and her friend made Valantine's cards and sold them at school and started to whip up some interest. She then managed to convince the Head to let us hold a fete. He agreed and she managed to organise quite an impressive event (with a little help from mum, of course). I din't tell her that I had managed to get the local newspaper interested, along with the local GRW rep and her two rescue dogs. So what a surprise she had when they all turned up at school!

In all we managed to raise a very impressive £150 for GRW and the school now sponsors 3 dogs!

Here are J & A and their friend with the dogs that came to visit.

Anyway, yesterday we had a stall at the school's summer fair and managed to raise another £40 for GRW. I'm going to hang on to it and hopefully raise some more so the school can sponsor a dog or two again next year.

I have to say, even though I am biased, that it's wonderful to see a kid so interested in helping others rather than just worrying about themselves.