Community and Charity Support
Charity Support at Erindale
– Ballroom Dancing with Val and Nigel Hughes
Val and I get a great kick from teaching and we hope our love and enthusiasm of dancing is passed on to our students, we also get the bonus of raising money & awareness of CF.
Our teaching and fundraising is our way of coping with our little grandson illness, he had 5 operations in the first week of his life, we felt so helpless watching him go in and out of surgery, by raising this money and the awareness of CF we feel in a small way that at we are doing something.
We have raised and donated about $7700.00 in the last 12 months, this includes; our teaching fee from you, sales of CF pin and pens and from a charity dance we run through the Canberra City Dance Club every October. We aim to continue and raise at least $10,000.00 a year, we have a charity dinner dance planned next year.
We promote a relaxed, supportive class and use a system of positive reinforcement. Instead of pointing out what people do wrong we encourage them until they get it right and then give them lots of praise. As ballroom dancing requires close contact between two people in the class, sometimes strangers, we find we are able to make people feel comfortable and overcome their feelings.
- Jewellery Making with Doris and Ian Grant
Having lost our daughter to cancer we felt that we should assist with fund raising for research to fight that disease. Cancer is devastating to the entire family and its circle of friends, especially when it strikes an apparently healthy person and when that person is relatively young.
Our daughter was very artistic and loved colours, so we set up a business, naming it “VIBRANT COLOURS”. As of this date this business has raised $29,000 for cancer research.
Our method of raising funds is via. making jewellery, shoulder bags and aprons and the retailing of these items along with jewellery components. In the case of jewellery components, we repack bulk components into small packs. At present we sell these items at market stalls in Canberra and to a limited extent in Sydney. However, market operators tend to control the merchandise that is sold, so our alternative to selling jewellery etc. is to sell items such as wooden boxes, picture frames, and hand made paper journals from India and Nepal.
As for myself (Doris), I have been a volunteer at Calvary Hospital (Kogarah, NSW) for four years, in the past, teaching jewellery making to the Oncology patients. Over the last three years, I have taught jewellery making classes at Erindale Community College, in a scheme where my wages are paid as a donation to St Vincents Hospital in Sydney; (wages for charity).
Future fund raising activities will include the teaching of jewellery making to adults and children in schools, churches and at birthday parties.