Looking back at our fundraising month
November 2010 has seen Friends of the Earth Scotland’s first ever fundraising month – Our Planet Your Passion – take place. We have dressed up as penguins, strutted our stuff on the catwalk and eaten delicious food all in the name of fundraising. We started off the month with a collection at Ocean Terminal. I was very nice to my little sister and in return she dressed up as a penguin with me! Some of our fantastic volunteers also donned the penguin costume – which proved to be very popular with young and old alike.
Our flagship event was a green fashion show at the Voodoo Rooms in Edinburgh. I have to admit that before I worked at Friends of
the Earth Scotland I gave little thought to where I bought my clothes – I had no regard to being ‘green’. What did fashion have to do with climate change? A lot, as it turns out. The clothing and textiles industry in the UK alone produces around 3.1 million tonnes of carbon dioxide, 2 million tonnes of waste and 70 million tonnes of waste water each year. One lingering questioned remained, though – can green fashion be trendy? We decided to let you be the judge of that by showcasing some of the best Edinburgh has to offer in green fashion. I have been very lucky to work with some fantastic people from Bill Baber Knitwear, Fabhatrix, Godiva Boutique, Catherine Aitken, Hatwalk, Sew Last Season and Ethics Girls as well as Mary’s Living and Giving Shop for Save the Children in Stockbridge – a new boutique style charity shop.
Students Amy and Kaiza from Queen Margaret University organised the catwalk show and persuaded (bribed?!) their fellow students to model, MC and DJ at the event. The models hair was done by Gillian Maciver of Coco Ribbon Hair and Emma Hall Hair Design. We called in as many favours as we could and one of my colleague’s daughter, Maxine, who is studying beauty, offered to do the makeup. We also sneaked in a couple of bellydancing performances by Moyra Banks and Catherine Jack, both of whom teach the dancing.
It was a great night and I think we managed to change a few minds along the way, my own included! I will certainly be paying more attention to where I shop in future.
After a quick rest it was on to the next event, a fundraising dinner at Henderson’s of Edinburgh. A delicious 2 course meal awaited. With live guitar music and an after dinner speech by Rob Edwards, it was a fantastic evening.
I would like to say a huge thank you to everyone who supported our
fundraising month – I hope you all had as much fun as we did! We have a lot of exciting events planned for 2011 – sign up to our newsletter to make sure that you hear about them first.