IWDA supporter’s successful ‘Ladies Lounge’ fundraiser!

After being inspired at the ‘Fiesta Espanola’ fundraiser last year, facilitated by two enthusiastic IWDA supporters, Sarah Wood took on a very last minute project and ran an event of her own to contribute towards IWDA’s Tax Appeal in June this year. With the help of some friends and the generous donations from her local community, Sarah brought together the ladies of McClaren Vale for an evening of cocktails, canapes and entertainment. Read about her fundraising adventure, which raised $1,325 for IWDA’s work in the Asia-Pacific.

Sarah & Ashara

Since the birth of our baby girl Ashara, earlier this year, I couldn’t help thinking about how blessed she and I are to be growing in a place where ,as females, we have so many opportunities to speak our minds, contribute in our community, to be true to ourselves and experience respect and strength so many different ways. Ready to emerge from my ‘post baby bubble’, this motivated me to try and do something in support of our global sisters who don’t share the same opportunities.

After attending  ‘Fiesta Espanola’ last year, a wonderful fundraising event for IWDA organinsed by friend Karen Heatherbell and Sarah Lucy, I felt inspired to organise an event to raise funds for IWDA’s 2010 Tax Appeal. With three weeks left until June 30th, I set about getting ready a ladies only cocktail party, which we held on Saturday June 27th to make sure we could get the funds to IWDA just in time.

The Ladies Lounge  took place at the Black Cockatoo Arthouse here in McLaren Vale (a not for profit community artspace started by my husband Greg and I a few years ago) and was attended by about 30 women some local and others from the hills and city who had traveled for the event. All were encouraged to ‘frock up’ for baby Ashara’s first cocktail party. We enjoyed gorgeous french wines, champagne, kir royale cocktails and a pink pompom mocktail for those non drinkers among the crowd. Whilst feasting on delicious canapes, nibbles and chocolate mouse cupcakes, we enjoyed performances by world music duo Nice Verdes who generously donated their music and half of their cd sales on the night. We also had a laugh with some short films and held a lucky prize draw for all the ladies who made donations to IWDA on the night.

Karen Heatherbell and I spoke about the great work IWDA do and shared the notion that out of me having attended the Fiesta Espanola, I was inspired to put on my own fundraising event and hoped that someone attending the Ladies Lounge would go on to organise an event of their own and so on….

A great time was had by all with several women calling me in the week after to tell me how fun and relaxing it was and how glad they were to find out about IWDA. We raised a total of $1,325 and we were so pleased with the result.

I would really like to thank IWDA for their support in organising this event and making it easy to do in such little time. Thank you to baby Ahsara (then 5 months old) for being so easy and happy on the night and my husband Greg for supporting my last minute schemes! A very big thankyou to Karen Heatherbell, Gill from Fall From Grace, Roisin, Claire , Jodie, The Green Room on High Street, Yummy Nuts Market, Stuart Haines, Joanna Gamlin, The BCA, Sarah Lucy, Evelyn Roth, Emily Barber, Alpha Box & Dice and others who supported me and contributed to this fun event. And of course a big heartfelt thank you to all the gorgeous ladies who attended who inspire me and my daugher in so many ways.

On this note, IWDA and our partners would like to thank Sarah and those who supported her in running this event. This is such a wonderful example of what someone can achieve in such a short amount of time - the dedication and passion that we see in the contributions of our supporters continue to blow us away. We are so very thankful for your effort, commitment and creativity!

If you have a fundraising idea, or would like to learn more about how you can contribute to IWDA, please click here.

Tags: Events/Campaigns/Press Releases

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 2nd, 2010 under Community, Recent.