Charity begins at ...... Christmas

Sold Out!

What a success we had in supporting the Billericay Christmas Market! For the first time ever we sold out of Raffle Tickets! Club members had already bought nearly £700 of tickets and, together with money donated to our “Wishing Well” and “Charity Spinner” we raised approximately £1900 for the nominated good causes – St. Luke’s Hospice, Aquabox, and other charities supported by Rotary.  (Shame none of us were winners!), but all the rest were sold on the day by:

• Club members
• Billericay School Interact club
• Buttsbury RotaKids club
• Quilters RotaKids Club
• Billericay Youth Town Council
• Other volunteers

Where do they get the repartee from – you should have heard the Buttsbury RotaKids monopolise the microphone – who thought up the catch phrase “Tickets only a pound!  Better value than Poundland”!

Our thanks to Buttsbury RotaKids, Quilters RotaKids, Billericay School Interact Club, and Billericay Youth Town Council and all our volunteers on the day.
It was a great success.

Soapbox Derby - It's all GO!

Our other main theme was our forthcoming 2018 Soapbox Derby, the third time we will be holding it.

Next year it takes place on May 7 - make sure you reserve the date!

We had three soapboxes on display at the entrance to the market, the Wombles and the Right Wasters from Basildon Council Cleansing department at the North entrance, and the Mayflower Marauder from the Rotary Club of Billericay Mayflower at the South entrance.  At our stand we had the covered Wagon Calamity Jane, the Black Pearl pirate ship from Complete CARnage, and “Nearly Virgin Air” from Killer Heels, which attracted the attention of the adults and delighted the passing children.  They  were quick to sit in the sopaboxes and try them out.

The Black Pearl and Nearly Virgin Air were a major feature to the Christmas Parade too.  The folks from Killed Heels in their “distinctive” dress (pun intended) were a great hit with the attendees at the market, handing out literally thousands of Soapbox Derby leaflets to interested spectators. We are very grateful to the four members of the Killer Heels team for giving up so much of their time to help publicize our next event.   But that wasn’t all, there was a complete tent made over to photos and posters from our 2017 event, and thanks to Quilters Junior School who lent us the huge 65 inch video screen, we were able to show continuously throughout the day, all 20 videos of the last two Soapbox Derbys. The screen had crowds around it all day long, and was a major talking point in the nearby pubs and restaurants.

Many people stopped to tell us how much they had enjoyed the last two events and they were “definitely” coming along in 2018, and others told us they were definitely going to enter a soapbox in 2018.