Ellie Towlson is a student at UWE. She’ll be joining Play Action International for an adventure of a lifetime by taking part in the Uganda Volunteer Project in 2022 – where she’ll become part of a local community and build a playground – having a lasting impact on thousands of children for years to come. Ellie will also be taking part in the Gorilla Trek, supporting the protection of the endangered Silverback Gorillas and their surrounding habitat.
Ellie is fundraising as part of her volunteering and to date has raised a whopping £2,618. She hosted a charity bake sale, offering up delicious treats to local residents and hosted a charity quiz night at a social club to boot. Ellie has offered up some of her top tips to help other fundraisers discover easy ways to fundraise for their projects. She said,
“For my charity bake-sale I contacted my local town shopping centre which they provided a place for the event. I contacted every single person I knew to get them to donate some cakes! Even asking the local bakery to help us out with some savoury goods!”
Ellie’s Top Tips for Cake Sales
1. Ask every single person you know to donate some sort of item, whether that is cupcakes cakes that you can slice up, whole-cakes, traybakes or cookies. The best sellers I found were sausage rolls loaves of bread and scones!
2. Ask your local bakery to make some goods.
3. Hold it at a shopping centre when they have a local market, as you’ll get so many more customers!
4. Don’t be nervous or afraid people are really friendly when it comes to yummy treats!
5. When you’re near the end and have a few things left over sell everything for a £1 and people will come running!
“For my charity quiz night I contacted our local social club to use their hall for our event space! I then contacted friends and family to get themselves into groups of six for a quiz team. The charity quiz night and also hosted a raffle competition with many prizes donated from friends and family!”
Ellie’s Top Tips for Quiz Nights
1. Get a good quiz-master. You can do it yourself or even get a family member to!
2. Tell everybody at the event why you’re doing this and what their money will go towards, it helps with donations!
3. Get some good raffle prizes that people will really want to bid for!
4. Enjoy yourself! Include your friends so you feel it’s more of a social and less pressure!
5. Talk to the team at Play Action. I’ve been wanting to do this trip since 2020 and each time I speak to Jack and Jess I get more and more excited for all the hard and beneficial work we will do changing the lives of children in Uganda! Bring on Uganda 2022!
Inspired by Ellie’s fundraising? Make a donation to her JustGiving page here. Find out how to get involved with the Uganda Volunteer Project, discover more here.
