A Roaring Success
On Sunday, James and Robin (of RHN fame) popped round to drop off the money they had raised from two under-18s discos, organised in support of the Tiger Campaign. The second of the discos had taken place a few nights before, and the boys had done an excellent job of spreading the word about the Tiger Campaign, planning the event, getting people interested and selling tickets ahead of the night. At dakini, we were thoroughly impressed with all their hard work and had wished them all the best for the event itself.
Because of this, I was particularly concerned by an SMS that came through from Robin in the early hours of Saturday morning, explaining that due to a few errant vodka-smugglers, the party had been forced to end an hour and a half early and to turn away a number of potential guests, thus missing out on much of the money that they had hoped to raise for the campaign. From the sounds of things, their ambitious fundraising plans had been largely dashed. What a shame, I thought. They’ve put in so much effort. I hope they’re not too disheartened.
By the time we had agreed to meet on Sunday, I had prepared myself to offer a few words of condolences and encouragement, to write off the fundraising and to start helping them plan the next event. I was rather intrigued, then, when upon their arrival, having apologies profusely (and unnecessarily) for the problems that had cropped up on the night, James and Robin presented me with two rather full-looking boxes containing the night’s takings.
“Oh right – thank you very much,” I said, pleasantly surprised. “How much did you manage to raise, all in all?”
“Oh… about £1250”.
I almost dropped the box on the floor.
My second fear was that the venue would be too put off by VodkaGate to let us put on any future Tiger events there, which would be a huge pain as it had been no easy task for the boys to find somewhere sufficiently teenage-friendly and non-extortionately priced. But, as it turned out, Robin and James had not just managed to raise a fantastic amount of money for the Tiger Campaign but had also forged an excellent relationship with the lovely owner. As a result, the management were perfectly happy to let RHN and the dakini team plan future events at The Old Crown, Archway and to work together to prevent against any future hiccups. So, good news for the Tiger Campaign and more points for James and Robin on the maturity and professionalism front.
It has been absolutely fantastic to see what these two boys have managed to achieve in such a short space of time – they are certainly topping the King of the Jungle league tables as a result! I hope now that RHN will help to inspire other young people to take on project like this, not to be daunted when things don’t go perfectly to plan and to understand how much potential they have to make a real difference to the issues they care about.
If all young people like James and Robin showed half as much dedication and determination to save the tiger, just think how much we could achieve.
If your school or organisation would like to take part in dakini’s King of the Jungle project, get in touch with lindsey [at] dakinimedia.com.
dakini x
Donate or find out more at http://www.tigercampaign.com/
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That’s really impressive and inspiring what these two young men are doing. Way to go, boys!
Thanks for sharing the good news.