Red Cross Blogs

Haiti collection strikes gold at Tesco

By Alix Miller
January 26, 2010 at 5:54 pm

Last Sunday I visited Tesco…and instead of mangos and muesli, came away with around £600.

It wasn’t my usual shopping trip I hasten to add…if only. No, moved by the plight of people affected by the earthquake in Haiti, I had volunteered to collect for the Disasters Emergency Committee(DEC) appeal , at my local supermarket, in west London.

Tesco, one of our corporate partners, had invited the British Red Cross to collect money for the appeal in 100 of their stores across the country last week. Dozens of staff, volunteers and members of the public took up the challenge.

Now you can’t beat a bucket when it comes to fundraising. It’s so easy and requires precious little planning. So it’s odd that it’s something I’ve never done, despite raising money for charity in the past.

My lovely friend, Tracey, also a bucket virgin, joined me. Armed with our buckets, sashes and big grins, we tentatively headed to our chosen spot, where all the shoppers, having made their purchases, would pass.

We were a bit daunted to start with and felt self-conscious. It also took us a few minutes to know what to say, without getting tongue-tied. “Help those affected by the earthquake in Haiti”, soon went by the wayside, in favour of: “Help Haiti”, or “Help people in Haiti who have lost everything”.

Soon we got into the swing of things, and within minutes coins and banknotes were spinning into our buckets. The shop manager helped by announcing our collection on the tannoy.

We made eye contact with every shopper, and some, who didn’t look like they were stopping, then came back later with a donation. Lots asked about what the Red Cross is doing in Haiti and I told them about my colleague Sharon who has been deployed with one of our emergency response units to help the relief effort. Find out how she’s been getting on.

Some shoppers plucked crisp £20 notes from their wallets, while others coaxed in small change sheepishly, saying: “Sorry..it’s all I’ve got”. We assured them that small change adds up to a big difference.

At one point a young man appeared, brandishing a heavy plastic bag of coppers. “I wanted to put these into the coin change machine, but it’s broken,” he explained, before, putting the haul (with some difficulty) into my bucket.

After an hour and a half the store closed. We were both exhausted with backache, but were buzzing.  It had been a very worthwhile shopping trip indeed.

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Tags: Disasters Emergency Committee, emergency response, fundraising, Haiti, Haiti earthquake, haiti earthquake appeal

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 26th, 2010 at 5:54 pm and is filed under Emergencies, Fundraising and events. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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