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Stevenage Community Trust Gift Appeal Week
12th December 2023
Every year, Stevenage Community Trust awards families in need in Stevenage and the surrounding villages £150 Christmas vouchers. This enables these families who are struggling to provide the Christmas that their Children deserve, It is something that we are hugely proud of and makes up a significant part of the £100,000 that we aim to give away each year. This year, we have awarded 209 families this incredible voucher, which equates to £31,350.
We are so proud to help our community, and we discovered that as we spoke more and more about the Christmas Gift Card scheme to people within our town, so many people wanted to know how they could get involved. So this year, we launched our first-ever ‘ Stevenage Community Trust Gift Appeal Week’. This exciting week ran from December 4th to December 10th, and we witnessed the whole community get behind us! With all the week's activities raising a whopping £14,144.44!
Throughout the week, we had numerous events and fundraisers happening. Such events included Non-School uniform days (Thank you, Almond Hill, Shephalbury Park and Wymondley Schools), Craft fair (Thank you, Collenswood School), Quiz Night (Thank you, Fairlands Primary School), Office Christmas Jumper Day (Thank you, Mantle) and generous donations in replacement of Christmas Cards (Thank you, Knebworth House and Pomroy Associates!). We also saw our lovely members, Stevenage Futsal, host an SCT Cup at the Stevenage Leisure Centre, where 12 teams competed against each other to take home the trophy.
The very excellent Anna at Em’s Florist hosted not one but two Christmas Wreath Workshops, which saw 50 ladies create their very own wreaths in aid of the SCT. Our incredible ambassador, Sarah Free, hosted her own Christmas Fair, whereby local businesses supported the trust and helped raise £750!
Stevenage Community Trust partnered with Stevenage Council to present ‘Christmas Island’ in the Town Centre. Numerous schools and performance groups from our community took to the stage to delight the audience with their festive performances. The performers and passers-by then had the opportunity to do a meet and greet with Santa Clause himself!
We also saw the infamous Lucy Thomas and Kim Wilde take to the stage at Knebworth Barns, delighting the audience with a very intimate and special gig. The night in itself raised £10,195. Thank you so much to our special guests, Kim and Lucy, our hosts, Knebworth Barns, and the event sponsors, Canter Holland and Megatron Steels, for making this possible.
Dinner and Dance 2023
22nd November 2023
We're delighted to report that the Stevenage Community Trust black-tie dinner held at The Priory Barn, Little Wymondley raised just over £33,000 on Friday 3rd November
An incredible evening, with many local companies helping to sponsor the evening, including Austin’s, Stevenage Packaging, Tollers, TDI Solutions (UK) Ltd, GCIS (UK) Ltd and Utility Line.
This year we had many new and very exciting prizes donated to our auction and raffle, including a holiday to Barbados and a family invitation to afternoon tea with non other than... David Walliams to be taken at his house. The auction in itself raised a staggering £18,650.
We also introduced our new speed raffle, which quite literally saw people running to the raffle table to retrieve their chosen prize! Thank you so much to everyone who donated prizes – we have never seen a raffle table like it.
The guests, trustees, staff and volunteers were genuinely taken by surprise as Robert Stewart, our charity President, arranged for one of the most versatile entertainers in the UK, comedian Tony Strange to deliver the evening's entertainment. Tony wowed the audience with his ingenious tongue and cheek humour, which got everyone in the mood to dance the night away!
The evening raised a staggering amount of just over £33,000, with many people on the evening choosing to gift a grant, donating directly to cover the costs of grants that have recently been awarded.
Our Chair Sharon Brown said "Myself and everyone at the Trust were blown away by the success of our Dinner and Dance. To raise that amount of money from one event during the current economic times is unimaginable and certainly exceeded our expectations. Thank you to every single business and individual who supported the event and for ensuring we can help those most in need in our community and give out more Christmas gift cards than ever before."
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