After a brief hiatus (with three weeks travelling Turkey and Jordan for Andrea and a mysterious week-long "vacation"/disappearance by Nick), The Great Canadian Beavers are all back in Canada and ready to go!
We are EXTREMELY pleased to announce we have procured a car for ourselves! A spiffy little 1.2 litre Vauxhall Agila in an aptly coloured red, which the UK seller has kindly agreed to hold on to until our arrival in London. When I get my hands on some photos I'll be sure to post them! a million thank you's to Dancy for stepping up and sorting this out for us.
A sponsorship package is also almost complete. I know we're a little late in the game for this one, but I suppose it's better late than never? I have to give out an extremely big THANK YOU to Drucey, of The Islanders, who has been an IMMENSE help so far, and even sent me his template and information from his own team's very successful sponsorship campaign.
Things finally feel like they're coming together, and I couldn't be more pleased! Visa applications will be sent out at the end of this week, and I am crossing all my cross-ables that it goes off without a hitch!
So this past tuesday, with the help of my phenomenal mother and her best friend (and Emily's mother) Melanie, a successful bakesale was carried out at my old elementary school, St. Michaels.
A massive (and grueling) 450 (or so) cupcakes were made, and an awesome $210.05 was made for Mercy Corps Mongolia! (I'm not too sure where that $0.05 came from...I think I may have let a couple kids get away with not paying the full $0.50. woops!)
A HUGE and sincere thank you to my mom and Melanie, I could not have done it without you two! even IF my cupcakes were made from scratch....;)
See photos below!
The decorating table.
Andrea and Dancy's crazy mother.
Emily's equally crazy mother.
table of cupcakes ready for decorating.
SPRINKLES! my favourite part.
Delicious!
Chocolate with maple topping.
Close up.
Prepping the cupcake trays.
Decorating.
As an aside, I have tweaked our photo gallery on the website. Now it's an actual gallery, not just a link to our Flickr page. Feel free to browse the photos, leave comments etc.!
xx
Mase.
Big thanks to Brend Wasserman and Jennifer Leigh Saunders for your donations :) Love you both, you girls are awesome!
*Mase.
Just under a hundred days to go. 99 to be exact!
It's been a long time coming, (mostly because, in the face of all the other preparations I forgot), but below are some team photos we took a couple months ago. Enjoy!
(you can click to enlarge them a bit individually)
Our team. In our non-existant car.
Captain Planet?
Perhaps a photo theme for future rally photos in remote locations?
Who needs a car when you have Nick.
So where exactly are we in terms of preparation for this epic journey from London, England to Ulaan Baatar, Mongolia you ask?
Good question.
1. Visa's have been arranged, though not officially applied for. (That will come in May and we are assured we won't have TOO difficult a time organizing it). At least, for those team members that have their official documentation prepared.
2. Still no car as of yet. We ARE looking at some prospective models but it relies entirely on what our final team count turns out to be (which should be decided this week). Once this is sorted we will immediately begin the search for OUR CAR!
3. Our official sponsors are currently The Quinte Sports Review and PartSource in Belleville, Ontario. I have also been agonizing over potential sponsorship packages to send to companies and, while it's been time consuming I believe the time is drawing near for me to send out as many letters as I physically can in hopes of even a few of them trickling back to me in the form of funds and aid.
4. In terms of funds raised, we have a total of $475 in online donations and about $1,000 (maybe a little more) in donations from the WONDERFUL patients of Dr. Mason at The Urgent Care Medical Clinic. A big thank you goes out to Kate-Ann Follwell, Bruce Diamon, Joan Young, David Dancy, Margaret Mason, Don Raycroft, Dave Elmy of the Quinte Sports Review, Kristin Scowcroft, Walmshields ltd. Mark Walmsley, Brian Dawson, Bob Jamieson, Clara and Marilyn Walker, The Scharf sisters and the Universty of Ottawa Alumni Association for their generous donations so far - (More names soon to come! I just don't have them all in front of me). I cannot stress enough how much these donations, regardless of how big or small, have helped this rally to come to fruition.
5. Lastly, as I mentioned in an earlier post, our charitable donation procedure has changed. We had issues with canadahelps.org and ultimately ended up having to switch online donations to justgiving.org, a UK based online donation facilitator. While we are excited to work closely with justgiving.org, and Mercy Corps Mongolia, it means that at this point in time we are unable to generate Canadian Tax receipts (because it is a UK based company/charity branch). We are of course concerned with the potential this has for deterring donations and sponsorship, but have no choice but to press on. If you are interested in making a donation you can go to our JustGiving page here. We appreciate any and all help!
I think that's it for now...
A.
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