How does one actually go about raising €4,500? And worse still how does one do it in less than 2 months?! In the clear light of day this was looking like a daunting task.
Of course by now people had heard about what we had signed up for and as you can imagine most of them thought we had lost our marbles. I think our parents were ready to have a heart attack. I mean, between the 2 of us we were talking about raising €9,000 in 2 months!
But then there were those who, at least to our faces, said go for it. They were nothing but positive and were so forthcoming with their support. It was these words of encouragement that you latched on to.
After a few days of coming to terms with what we had ahead of us we decided that we would first give the local car boot sale a go. Who knows, maybe we would be on to a winner and could set up a stall on each of the Sundays over the coming weeks.
Now I had never been to a car boot sale but I figured anything was worth a try. And remember we had good on our side! The previous weekend Mary had gone out and sussed the lay of the land so we knew that stalls went on a first come first served basis. Mary decided that she would sell cakes and I figured that I could easily get my hands on spare books so a book stall was the way to go.
The week leading up the sale Mary enlisted the help of our mother and practically had her tied to the oven for the week cooking up a storm. In the meantime I gathered as many books as I could get and I ended up with about 250 - 300, mainly of the 'chick lit' variety.
That Sunday morning at 6:45 (I know, I was traumatised!) we headed out to the car boot sale and took our place in the queue for stalls. We managed to get 2 stalls together and we figured that we had ended up in a good location. We were definitely going to get all the passing trade. Dragging the stalls together we got to work making sure to stick up as many Haven posters as we could. 'All proceeds going to Haven's Build It Week in Haiti!' We even had the t-shirts!
After a slow start Mary's cakes started selling well and we figured that we could have done a lot better if we had just sold buns (cakes were slower to go). In the end though the return could not justify the effort during the week together with the cost of ingredients. But at least her produce sold.
Over on the book stall I could not give books away. I think I managed to sell 20 books if I'm lucky. In the back of my head all I could think about was the fact that I was going to have to pack them all up again...and bring them home with me!
After the cost of the stalls we came away with €112...between us! Richard Branson does not need to be worried.
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