Craig Garratt is a great friend of Tenderfeet from Australia who is always looking for ways to help the school. He visited Tenderfeet back in October of last year and has been working hard to raise funds and awareness.
For instance, Craig's graphic design company Gumption features news and information about Tenderfeet on the website and in company emails. He also is working with a local High School in the area to educate young people about the struggles of children living in poverty.
But perhaps his most innovative idea to date is to use sand sculptures to help Tenderfeet. It turns out Craig and friends are terrific sand sculptors and at a recent event his team was paid to create one of their masterpieces. They decided to donate the proceeds to Tenderfeet as well as tell the story of Tenderfeet to folks who came by to enjoy the sculpture. Here is a page about their experience.
Craig shows that fundraising doesn't have to be a horrible experience, you can have fun and make a difference at the same time. Would you like to do a creative fundraiser? Please let me know by emailing me at dmitchell@lahash.net and I would be glad to provide ideas, photos, video or any other materials that might help.
Craig writes about the day:
"We built a Marsupial Lion – an animal that used to live around our way until about 15,000 years ago. We have built it pretty close to life size too! The ‘rules’ of the art form are that you can only use the sand where you are, and water at hand (ie the ocean or river front you are on).
The whole team at work got involved and another local graphic designer and good friend joined us. We had six people building and pounding the pile of sand, and Stuart, Warren and myself carved it. Kate ran around spraying it with water all day so it didn’t dry out as we carved and Ally, Stuarts wife, went into a wonderful spiel about Tenderfeet to anybody that stopped and had a look.
Her throat was dry at the end as at one point we had nearly 30 people crowded around watching. During the day hundreds saw it under construction. Kids especially loved it, and many got right into it, giving us some serious advice on how to do it properly so it wouldn’t collapse (there are many budding engineers under 10 around here!!). We started at 6 am and finished up around 1:30 pm – everyone had a blast doing it."
Posts
