In this day and age, in the midst of the recession, money is tighter than it has ever been before. People are taking measures left, right and centre to save their cash, and yet still more money than ever is being donated to charities. Last year £26.8million was given to Children In Need, in only one night. However, for a fifteen-year-old girl trying to raise money for an expedition to Botswana, encouraging people to donate money to her cause is nigh on impossible. In this case, this fifteen-year-old girl happens to be me.
In 2014 Sutton High School for girls is sending a team of twenty teenagers to Botswana and Zambia, to help out rebuild a local school and teach the children there English and other basic skills. The company, Outlook Expeditions, encourages the girls to raise money by putting on events and selling goods or a service, but since signing up I have found that that is much more easily said than done.
The first thing I decided I should do was put on a gig in my school. It should be easy, no? I knew the bands; I could book it with the school, sell hundreds of tickets and make my £4000 in one foul swoop. Right? Wrong. Forms had to be signed, letters had to be written, and not to mention the biggest problem we had never foreseen – ticket sales were almost negligible. It seemed we would make no money, and would have to find some other way of raising the cash.
However, eventually things pulled through. With a crowd mostly of our friends who had been forced to come along, we raised over £500 on the night – not as much as we had hoped, but enough to make it worthwhile.
What did we learn from our experience? Not to aim too high. That, if anything, is one crucial piece of advice I can give to any young teenager hoping to raise money – start with something simple, let your sights low and you might be presently surprised.
