Over the past two years, Josie, 12, and Eve, 10, have been developing their creative skills, as well as their fundraising skills, in their spare time.
When they’re not helping out on the farm or doing home schooling, these sisters are looking into the next market, show or fair in their local area. They book a place and spend their leisure time making oodles of ‘Friendly Pet Rocks’ for their stall and decide if they should also sell other things like fudge and cookies to increase their sales.
Generally, items at their stall range in price from $0.50 to $4.00 and every cent is donated to ChildFund Australia to purchase items from the Donations with a Difference Catalogue. Deciding which items to buy is often the hardest part of fundraising for Josie and Eve!
The girls are moved by the generosity of their community. At their last stall, “one fellow bought a Friendly Pet Rock ($0.50) from them with a $20 note and told them to keep the change because he liked what they were doing,” their mum told us. “It gives them a lot of confidence, purpose and experience with money, marketing, presentation and people skills.”
Both Josie and Eve are so pleased to be helping children who are less fortunate than they are. They are proud of their achievements and proud to be contributing to the work of ChildFund Australia.
Calissa and Nathan were fortunate enough to be able to meet their sponsored child in Kenya before their wedding.
“Upon visiting the community we saw the great work that ChildFund was doing and were impressed to find the community leading the way with development plans to improve their standard of living. One of their priorities was to complete the building of a well so they could become more self sustaining and less reliant on donations” commented Nathan.
Upon returning to Australia the couple had a burning desire to help the community achieve their goal of providing access to clean water for everyone in the community.
Nathan and Calissa decided their wedding provided the perfect opportunity to ask for donations to support this project.
On their invitations they gave guests the option to make a donation and told them about the people they had met in Kenya. Calissa recalls “our friends and family reacted with surprise at first but then with pride as they knew they were also a part of providing a community with an essential resource to help themselves.”
She continued, “this seemed to be quite a nice way of letting people become involved in our wedding celebrations and also involved in our way of life. We did give our guests the options of giving gifts but the vast majority donated to the water project.”
The now happily married couple can be proud of what they have achieved for their sponsored child’s community. By sacrificing gifts, that weren’t essential, Calissa and Nathan have provided a community of over 500 people with access to one of life’s essentials, water.
