Summer Sign-off
I feel like we start a lot of these posts with, ‘There’s so much to catch up on…’ But it’s true!
We’re on the verge of taking a much-needed break for a few weeks, but we’ve had such a wonderful summer so far.
After a successful night at Howden Minster for the Community Coronation Concert we’d really began to feel like we might have reached our pinnacle that evening. We’d had such a good time and felt as though we’d become a proper member of the Howden Community.
However, after further success at Howden Show we’re starting to realise that our ambitions know no bounds at this stage. The charity is constantly growing and evolving and it’s all because of the support of you lovely people.
We raised over £1,000 at Howden Show, with one the highlights certainly being the frantic fight to win a signed Alan Shearer shirt on our Foot Dart Challenge – but there could only be one winner, and we were delighted to hand it over to young Harry who came back and topped the leaderboard not once, not twice but three times to make sure he would taking that shirt home. Well done Harry!
It’s become evident in the last six months that a lot of other organisations are beginning to recognise us now, and so it has been a real pleasure working alongside Stage Door and Duet School of Dance this summer on their various productions. We enjoyed three nights at Howden School to support Stage Door’s amazing production of Matilda, and we also had a lovely afternoon with Duet at their end of summer gala where we learnt that they had raised an incredible £2,000 for us this year.
Chris also put on a fantastic show at the Howden Shire Hall on July 8. There was music from Ben Miller and Harkin’s Bike, but the enduring memory of the evening will certainly be seeing all of Luke’s family and friends together having a wonderful time in his memory. We’ll always raise money, that’s what a charity does – but these types of events are extra special. It’s not about fundraising, it’s about giving something back to the community that has been so kind to us, and so we were delighted that everyone had such a good time.
And in amongst all of this excitement we also celebrated our first birthday! It was really quite special to hit the £30,000 milestone the same week that we reached a significant marker on our journey. We’ve come such a long way since that original launch event back in July 2022. We’re not sure that any of us really knew where we would go from there, or what our goals and ambitions even were for the future, but it’s probably fair to say now that we’ve got a belly full of ambition to keep kicking on to make sure we give cancer the boot for good.
We’ve also celebrated a number of new partnerships; so welcome to The Hop Cavern, The Bowman’s, James Legal Solicitors, PA Media, The Black Swan, Propeller Fuels and the Drax Group UK.
Our last big act of the summer was of course the inaugural A Shining Light Junior Football Tournament. We welcomed 48 teams to Howden School over two days and thoroughly enjoyed ourselves doing it. It seemed like a mad idea at the time, but we love it when a plan comes together, and as always our army of willing volunteers were out in full force to make sure everything went smoothly. So smoothly in fact that we raised an absolutely staggering £3,500 – our biggest event total to date. Enjoying such success might just have prompted us to think about doing it all over again next year…
We were also very lucky to have a film crew from JustGiving join us for one of the days who came along to make a film about Ryan and the work he has been doing for A Shining Light over the last 12 months. We’re extremely proud that his work has earned him a nomination in this year’s JustGiving Awards in the category of Community Hero of the Year. His fate is in the hands of the British public and you can vote for him here. Voting closes on August 25 and we’ll be sure to let you know how he gets on when he heads down to London for the awards ceremony in September.
So after a rollercoaster year it’s time for us to take a little bit of a holiday. We’ll still be very present on social media as we continue to celebrate our supporters and wonderful Friends of A Shining Light, but we’re taking a break from events for a while and getting ready to hit the autumn season with everything we’ve got.
