Iceland Support

Written by Ian Mitchell

As any charity organiser will tell you, fund raising for the charity is always hard, especially in tough economic times such as those we are currently experiencing. This worry is then further compounded by having to raise a certain amount of funds, by a specific date, ie for an event. A year ago the Scout troop leaders decided that in July 2010 we would take the Scouts abroad for their annual summer camp. This fitted perfectly into our rolling 4 year programme that gives the Scouts a chance to gain the highest Award (Gold Chief Scouts Award) that any Scout can attain, whilst giving them a variety of camping experiences. This was going to be a big challenge to organise, and would need levels of fund raising above anything we had ever done before. With a target of nearly £5000 to raise a fund raising plan was created. This involved a mixture of activities from Car Park management to sponsored walks. Even with all the array of fund-raising activities scheduled we still had a £1000 shortfall. That was until we had an offer from the manager at the local Iceland store to do bag packing at the end of the tills. We jumped at the opportunity and set ourselves a target of £1000 over 3 weekends, each with 3 shifts of 4 hours. Scouts put their names down for a shift in each weekend, spreading the load on them, but ensuring that we always had all tills covered. Once the Scouts had learnt how to pack bags properly, some of the older scouts also got the hang of 'Home Delivery', where customer items have to be packed in a certain way, to keep all of the frozen stuff together, etc. At the end of the first weekend we reached £390, £60 over the weekends target, this was looking promising. The subsequent weekends also produce similar amounts and we managed to raise over £1100. Exceeding our target by £100. Normally the story would stop here with a round of back slaps and thanks, but in this case this is not the end, because one month before we had to depart we held a car wash, with the expectation of getting £1000, this became a dismal flop, only raising £300. What were we to do with such a short amount of time left. Well, one quick call later to the manager at Iceland and we had two emergency bag packs scheduled and due to the success of other events and some donations we were only £300 short. At the two Emergency Bag Packs the Scouts worked exceptionally hard, receiving £400, helping us reach our target in time. We are now on the eve of our trip, funds raised, stress removed (apart from getting 14 Scouts and 6 leaders to KISC in Switzerland and back again!) and with all Scouts excited beyond belief. I would therefore like to take this opportunity to firstly thank the Scouts and leaders who turned up at the bag packing and worked so hard. Secondly I would like to thank all of the customers at Iceland and parents who donated money in exchange for their bags being packed. Thirdly I would like to thank the staff at Iceland for being so supportive and making us feel very welcome when we were there and finally a very big thank you to Jason the manager for making it all possible and for being so approachable and accommodating making a tough task easy for us.

Last Updated on Saturday, 17 July 2010 10:58