Why I love my job

There are many reasons why a love my job, but this time of the year is definitely one of them! Over the past week I've been receiving emails, facebook messages, skype messages and letters from ESTC hosts in every corner of the world. Although this is my third year working on this campaign, our hosts' creativity and generosity never cease to amaze and inspire me!

Musicians at Suraj's event in Nepal

One of my favourite things about this year's campaign is that we've had several events take place within the countries we support. For example in Nepal, Suraj teamed up with Antardristi (one of our partners) and Diwen (former GVN employee on her travels) to organize an evening of music and dancing. In Diwen's words "It was an EVENT. Two of the best bands from Nepal, as well as musicians from Egypt, Turkey, etc jamming with the bands. The music is SUPER. And these musicians were all playing for free for ESTC. The people who organised this ESTC were AMAZING. Capital letters AMAZING. Friends, business people, restaurant owners, musicians, those who care enough to organise ESTC at their own time and resource."

These delicious cupcakes didn't last long!

Our own event here in Wellington was so much fun! We decided to do our event at a beautiful little cinema in Petone. We watched Oranges and Sunshine and had some delicious nibbles and drinks. A big highlight of the evening was our annual raffle which had some amazing prizes thanks to our generous sponsors. It was such a fun evening and it was great to have people of all ages and nationalities there! A huge thank you to Lydia, Fiona and Luke for organizing the event.

Eliza, Lydia, Luke and Fiona at GVN's ESTC event in Wellington

I really recommend that you check out our past events gallery to read about other events from around the world and keep an eye on our facebook page as well for regular updates.

And don't forget - if you haven't yet hosted your event, it's not too late! Please take lots of photos and send them our way so we can add you to our gallery!

A HUGE thank you to everyone,
Eliza

Eat So They Can 2010 - One Year On

With Eat So They Can 2011 right around the corner, hopefully you're all very busy planning your events! Here at the Eat So They Can office, we are flat out planning for the weekend ahead.

But we thought that amidst all the chaos, you might like to hear about how one of our projects has come along in the past 12 months. The Real Uganda has been one of our key partner organisations over the last few years, and 2010 ESTC funds went towards building a goat farm, a sustainable initiative to support the children of Johnson Nkosi Memorial School and the surrounding community.

Here are a few words from Leslie Wieghill of The Real Uganda:

"This project created a sustainable environment for a goat farm to grow beyond pre-existing capacity. The farm will now generate income for the school. In its former (small) size it only created interest in goats and a bit of milk.

We built a 100’x70’ fenced goat grazing yard, constructed a raised permanent house for the goats, and purchased 7 pregnant goats (as they each gave birth to twins – we actually bought 21 goats!).

In 2010, when Johnson Nkosi Memorial School started keeping goats, they had 6 goats in a small enclosure made of tree branches. There was no house for the goats to sleep in or get out of the rain. There was no grazing area, food had to be brought to them everyday.

 Today the goat farm has expanded to 34 goats. They are healthier now with their private grazing area – eating fresh (growing) greens and getting some exercise. The raised house keeps them warm and clean at night and safe from thieves as well.

A goat keeper has been hired to keep their house clean and move them to and from the grazing yard. 

In terms of the future, we hope the project will become a learning aid for both Johnson Nkosi students and community members. Goats are in demand in Uganda right now. They are cheap and easy to keep and they multiply quickly. We want to show our process increases income as the goats are kept healthier than the traditional way.

324 children have benefited or will benefit from this program."

On behalf of everyone at ESTC, we just want to say a huge thank you to The Real Uganda for all the hard work they put in. To develop a project that will benefit over 300 children is an amazing result. We would also like to thank all the hosts who supported the Orphaned and Vulnerable Children cause in 2010, as this project would not have been able to go ahead without your support.

This is just an example of the kind of project that your ESTC 2011 funds will go towards. Hopefully, in one year from now, we can again tell you about all the amazing things that have been achieved with the funds that our hosts raise this year.

Finally, good luck with the weekend ahead! It feels like we have been building towards this weekend for quite some time, and now that it's finally here, we are so excited! As always, the ESTC team is here to answer any last minute questions you may have. Other than that, I guess all we can do is wish you all the best for this weekend! We are really looking forward to hearing about how everyone's events went!

Good luck everyone!

 - Luke and the ESTC Team.

Just a week to go, folks!

With just over a week to go, we’re getting really excited to kick off the Eat So They Can weekend for 2011. If you’d still like to host, it’s not too late! Here’s some event ideas that go down a treat. If you’ve already signed up to host, have a read anyway. It might inspire you to spontaneously theme your event. (Skip to the bottom to read about the GVN event for this year!)

Show off your culinary skills by cooking an impressive dinner for your guests! In the past, hosts have chosen to hold a formal sit-down dinner for friends and family. Or if you’re not a budding Jamie Oliver or Martha Stewart in the kitchen, challenge your guests to bring a dish to share each. 

Don’t let the name fool you... Eat So They Can events do not have to be solely food related! We’ve had Eat So They Can art exhibitions, cocktail parties, movie screenings, cigar lounge events and tea parties, and all of them were a great success!

Get competitive. If you have a competitive streak in you, plan an event based around a competition or sport. A cooking or baking competition, trivia night or friendly sports game (or a game of garden bowls if you’d prefer to laze in the sun) are all great ways to get people involved and having fun.

Or, if you are struggling to come up with an idea or theme, combine your event with an existing holiday. Halloween is coming up... Trick or Treat So They Can, anyone?

If an event isn’t your thing, recruit some friends to get busy in the kitchen and produce some baked goods to sell. A bake sale at a community fair, school or workplace is an easy way to spread the word about Eat So They Can and raise some money.

We hope these ideas helped... but please don’t limit yourself! The more creative, the better – we want you to enjoy your event.

So... what are we up to this Eat So They Can weekend? GVN and the Eat So They Can team will be attending a fundraiser movie screening of Oranges and Sunshine in Petone, Wellington on October 17th. Alongside this, our generous sponsors have donated some awesome prizes for our raffle this year. We're aiming to raise $800 at this event, and we plan on attending other ESTC events in the region over the 15-16th. If you're in Wellington and would like to attend, send us an email to hear the details - we'd love to have you come along.

If you have any questions, or would like to share an idea,drop us a line! We’d 

love to hear from you.

-          Fiona and the Eat So They Can team

A A huge thank-you to our event sponsors: Paramount Theatre, InterContinental Hotels, Bluebridge Ferries, Lazule Jewellery, Southern Cross Bar, The Body Shop, SuperLiquor, Hardy's, Health2000, King of Knives, Villa Costa and Brendan Grant Artwork.