Leading Initiatives that have a Purpose: Fundraising for Women’s Aid

Mount Lourdes Grammar School students: Aisling, Emma, Eimear, Ellie, Brijit and Caoilfhionn, carried out their Leadership Project Fundraiser for Women's Aid, and managed to raise £2,020.53, through organising a number of initiatives, including: a raffle, bake sale and a quiz for a Year 9 class.

We secured 10 prizes with the help of our generous sponsors: Smyth Transport, Boilers & Stoves, Roslea Podiatry Clinic, Erne Pharmacy, Temple Beauty, Timoney Windows and Nature’s Choice. These prizes consisted of a BPerfect Makeup set worth over £130, an Erne Pharmacy Hamper including a full-sized bottle of Coco Chanel perfume, an Alexa Echo Dot, afternoon tea at the Lough Erne Resort and a Temple Beauty Tanning Hamper.

Tickets to the raffle were sent home with some Year 9s over the Christmas break, with a prize offered to the student who sold the most tickets. The Year 9s alone managed to raise over £500! As a group we also sold tickets to our own family and friends, and one of the girls was able to send tickets to her mentor, who, in turn, distributed tickets within her company. After the Christmas break, tickets were sold to the whole school, with both students and teachers alike entering the raffle in hopes to win the amazing prizes.

The bake sale was also a huge success, taking place a day before the raffle and quiz, where we brought in home-baked cupcakes, cookies and traybakes and sold them to students during break. We then decided to sell last minute raffle tickets at the bake sale, allowing them to raise over £300 in total.

The raffle took place at the end of a quiz also organised by these girls for a class in Year 9, which also offered prizes for the quiz winners. The quiz day was enjoyed by both the Year 9s and the organisers of the project, and the raffle was a fun way to end the day. There was also time for some music and dancing at the end of the day!

This project allowed us to develop so many skills, including how to keep going when things don’t go your way. The project taught us how to network by securing sponsors for our and how to advertise through the designing of posters to promote our raffle.

Booking tables and chairs as well as decorating the Lecture Theatre with balloons helped us with our organisational skills, and reading out the quiz questions provided experience using public speaking skills we had learned within the SistersIN modules. We showed commitment and resilience throughout the entire project, but especially when we realised that we could no longer use the Assembly Hall for our project, opting to use the Lecture Theatre instead. We showed resilience when we had to host our bake sale a day earlier than planned due to a scheduling error.

We were able to strengthen our communication skills when we reached out to Women’s Aid and secured posters, pens and a donations bucket that we were then able to use during the bake sale and quiz, and we obtained valuable knowledge about budgeting when buying prizes with the sponsor money we had raised.

Most importantly, we learned how to work and communicate effectively as a team, each taking on leadership roles within the project and proving that even with setbacks, achieving your goals is possible.

This project will greatly benefit Women’s Aid and all of the people that they help on a daily basis. The money raised will make a positive impact on the lives of domestic abuse victims, and we chose this charity as they strongly believe in the importance of keeping women and children safe, especially in their own homes. This project will also help to raise awareness of domestic abuse and domestic violence.

The quiz also proved to be an educational experience for the Year 9 class, with each round of the quiz being focused on a different school subject and 4 bonus rounds at the end: a teacher round, a picture round, a general knowledge round and a Women’s Aid round which also helped to raise awareness of domestic abuse and domestic violence.

Overall, the group’s project was a massive success, and we were able to learn a lot about leadership through it while making a positive difference. It allowed the group independence to organise every aspect of the project themselves and gave them more confidence to organise events like this in the future. Our SistersIN cohort greatly appreciated this opportunity and really enjoyed the entire experience, from planning the event to organizing it, and finally putting our plans to action.