Busy busy busy

The last two weeks of July I worked at a play scheme for children in Lanaken. This is for children who need supervision throughout the day while their parents are out at work. I was responsible for the creative activities and supervised children between the age of 7 and 12. We do several kind of activities, but what I enjoyed the most was making the 'hippie' T-shirts with the children. We dyed white T-shirts into textile paint after making patterns with elastic bands on it.

This is sort of the idea, but it looked far less professional when we made it (though much nicer if I can be honest). The children loved doing this and that made it all the more enjoyable for me.
I loved doing the play scheme, but it's very time- consuming.

So at the beginning of August I really had to start putting all my energy into the fundraising. It's hard, I still have trouble with asking people money and I really have to get over my shyness.
I have received a lot of generous donations from friends, family and companies in the village. My grandfather did a proof reading job, and donated the money which he earned with that to my project. All my donors get a broche of a sunflower made out of felt which me and my mum made.

This is picture of me making them.

Last week Sunday, the 12th, we organised a baking sale. On the Saturday we went to the farmers' market in Eisden bought all the ingredients and the same day we made home-made lemonade and I started baking chocolate and blueberry muffins.
On Sunday I put everything ready at 10 o'clock in the morning. We hung up two banners saying BAKE 4 MALAWI, put a nice vase of sunflowers on the table and displayed the biscuits and muffins etc.
It was a very sunny and busy in the village so we were very very lucky! We soundtracked the whole event with Paul Simon's Graceland, Miriam Makeba and Vampire Weekend to get people in an African mood.
I had a couple of friends who helped me out, and when Sarah got out the waffle iron and started baking fresh   waffels and once one of our clients tasted the gingerbreadmen my mother made and called out OH MY GOD THIS IS DELICIOUS the customers came in loads.

From left to right: Sarah, Judith and me

After a long and hot day I treated my friends to a drink and we counted the money. We collected 280,93 euros, which was far more than I expected and that means that we made a profit of more than 200 euros.
We will probably do this again this weekend, but we have learnt to not start at 10, but preferably at 12, and to get a large parasol to avoid sunstrokes in case of warm weather.