After we had the talks from Homelink and Age Action, we felt inspired and filled with new and fresh ideas for our YSI project. The foundation of our project is loneliness in the elderly, and our aim is to help organisations that support the elderly. This involves morally and financially aiding the elderly. Also as I have mentioned, we aspire to create a magazine dedicated to the stories of elderly. To fulfill these aims, we thought it a good idea to organise a fundraiser to collect money for an organisation. After much discussion and planning we decided to do a bake sale in aid of Homelink. We chose Homelink as we have been given a talk by them a few weeks earlier. Through this talk we have built a connection with Homelink and agreed to help them out throughout Transition Year as part of our YSI project. Immediately plans were made, people assigned roles and cakes asked to be baked! Initially we had planned to do the bake sale on the Friday before the mid-term break. I really liked this idea as it meant we could have a Halloween themed bake sale! The minute I got home I went to the shops to buy Halloween themed cake decorations and equipment (pumpkin shaped cupcakes moulds!). However there was a teacher’s strike the day before the designated date for our bake sale, which meant we were off school. We thought it wiser to postpone the bake sale to the Friday after mid-term break, as people might be busy on the strike day and forget to bake. Also we needed all the time we could get to ensure this was a successful bake sale, and generate a respectable sum of money for Homelink. So the decision was made and communicated to the rest of the school, that the YSI bake sale would be on Friday the 11th of November! First thing in the morning I rushed to the canteen to help set it up for the bake sale. All the YSI members gathered and helped out with stacking the chairs and moving the tables along the walls. A few people, including me, had our Public Access to Law course on the same day. Therefore we left to do our course, and the others stayed to finish preparing for the bake sale. While we were doing the course a handful of students from YSI stayed in the canteen to sell the cakes to the Junior School. I remember being a slight bit anxious that after the Junior School had taken their cakes, that we wouldn’t have enough to sell to the Senior School. Then minute the bell rang for break I was out the door to the canteen and helping out with selling the cakes. The price we concluded on was €2 for 2 cakes. It was very fun and exciting selling the homemade goodies to people! I brought my IPod with me and went around the tables taking pictures of the YSI group in action selling cakes! I was pleasantly surprised with the amount of cakes people had brought in, all of which looked delicious! I had baked banana bread and chocolate chip cookies. By the time break was over, we had reduced the selling price down to €1 for 2 things, such was the quantity of food left!
In total the YSI group made around €1000 in only a short while, for Homelink. This is an amazing figure, that I can safely say we did not expect! I am very glad that the bake sale was a success. I think we benefited from it (getting to eat all those yummy cakes!) as much as Homelink did.
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YSIYSI stands for Young Social Innovators. For our YSI project we have decided on helping loneliness in the elderly and putting unity back in community! I will keep you updated on events that occur in YSI during the year. Archives
April 2017
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