Syria Raffleblog Day 16 - £1201

It's me again, giving Jo a well earned rest. And it looks like we've broken the £1200 mark! Some very generous people have donated today, so a huge thank you.

Quick note - if you want to enter the raffle, please DON'T add Gift Aid and please DO enter your email address on the JustGiving page - it's the last step you take before exiting. There are instructions for how to do it in our blurb on the page - without your email address, I can't send you your raffle ticket numbers and worse, you might win and not be able to collect your prize!

Right, off to bed. Another day, another dollar, as somebody famous said, I believe... please do keep sharing and tweeting because there's a lot of money left to raise and the need is urgent and growing. 

Syria Rafflblog Day 15 - £1,161

Guest post from Jo

Today sees another landmark for the fundraising with our 50th donation. Made by my university friend Mo. Thanks Mo!

We're hoping to raise a bit of money with a gig that a friend here in Birmingham is setting up. I had told her a little about what we were doing and she mailed me a while ago to ask if she could help. Her exact words were 'is there anything somebody like me could do?' She is a 25-year old who has just graduated with a degree in sound engineering and knows a lot of people on the music scene so I suggested she might organise a gig.

Within a week she'd booked a venue and confirmed three great acts. She's waiting on a headline act and possibly even looking for a DJ to make it a late-nighter. We should be able to sell tickets to over 100 people at £5 a time, raising over £500.

While I'm not yet over the hill, it has been quite some time since I was 25 and it is really nice to see someone this age getting involved. I'm also looking to a good night out as the bands do sound good. The gig will be on Friday August 17th at the Station in Kings Heath, Birmingham.

Meanwhile, people are streaming out of Syria's largest city, Aleppo. Around 200,000 have already left for refugee camps over the border and to seek sanctuary in other parts of Syria. The BBC's Ian Pannell reported under fire from Aleppo last night; his footage showed another child killed by shrapnel, his bloodied body laid out on a gurney. Next to him on another bed was his younger brother, a boy called Mohammed who had been peppered with shrapnel and was screaming in pain as his wounds were cleaned as best they could be in the makeshift clinic. I can't imagine that Mohammend won't need antibiotics to stop his wounds going sceptic. But he may not get them, simply because drugs aren't available in many places. Even though he didn't die instantly from the attack that killed his brother, his long term recovery without drugs to fight infection can't be certain.

 By  donating on the JustGiving page we've set up, your money goes direct to the charity Hand in Hand for Syria which buys urgently needed medical supplies and gets them to where people are being terribly injured on the ground. If you can, please do take a look and enter the raffle:

Syria Raffleblog Day 12 - £1,111

Guest post from Jo

The total is still edging up, we're still going!

One of my contacts Tweeted the Just Giving link to his 15,000 Twitter followers a couple of days ago, which was very kind of him. We're still working hard trying to come up with ways to get the link to as many people as possible and shares on Twitter and Facebook are  a great way of spreading the word.

I'm always interested to see how much people know about the Syrian situation. It sometimes feels very sad that people's lives are being torn apart really so near to us and so many people are just unaware of what is happening. Yesterday marked 500 days of conflict in Syria and with no end in sight it is essential to get medical aid to people suffering there.

To add to the Twibbon Louise posted about on Friday there is also a Facebook Picbadge, a little version of the Hand in Hand for Syria logo which people can stick on their profile picture to raise awareness. Using the Twibbon or the Picbadge is a help in getting people to perhaps have a little think about Syria even if you can't donate.

Louise and I have also been emailing everyone we know with a little note explaining what is going on and what Hand in Hand are doing. It feels a bit like pestering people, but dropping some information into people's inboxes has proved a good way of getting the message through. If you would like a copy of the letter to send to your contacts please do get in touch  with Louise at louise@louisetickle.co.uk.

Syria Raffleblog Day 10 - £1,086

Ooh, a little flurry of donations to the page yesterday - very exciting! We're up to £1,086 which is great, and Jo and her sisters in Birmingham are sorting out a gig as a fundraiser to sell tickets at, so we'll get more for the pot that way. We're off camping today (camping is most definitely not my favourite thing, but it's sunny so it may be tolerable) and when people are sufficiently well-oiled tonight I will be flogging raffle tickets to my friends round the campfire. They'll love me in the morning.

The other news is we have a Hand in Hand for Syria Twibbon for anyone who is a Twitter afficionado and would like to apply it to their picture to raise awareness of the charity's work. Here's the link, and thanks to Hand in Hand for setting it up.

http://twibbon.com/Search?searchQuery=Hand+in+Hand+for+Syria

Right, that's it for now, as I have work to do that's not Syria-related. I'll keep tweeting today and if you could help the campaign by sharing the blog and the JustGiving page here, that'd be just brilliant.

Syria Raffleblog day 8 and a half - £1001

A guest post today from my friend Jo in Birmingham , who is working extremely hard on this:

Well, we're over the £1000 mark. One thousand and one pounds raised in just over a week. A really big thank you to every single person who has donated so far.

There's a great story behind the £50 that took us over that first really big milestone. Hand in Hand for Syria tweeted yesterday to say that a boy of seven had decided to swim the English Channel to raise money for them. Joseph had seen an episode of Newsround about the conflict and decided he wanted to do something to help.

So when I sent Joseph a message to tell him how amazing his plan was and that we would donate, he sent a message back telling us he would ask his parents to donate on our page.

And that was the £50 donation that took us over £1000. A remarkable little boy with extremely generous parents.

Because he is only seven Joseph isn't allowed to swim the real Channel, so he is going to do the 21 miles (33,796 metres) in a pool and is swimming nearly every day. He hopes to visit Syrian refugees in Turkey when he has done his swimming. Here's his website: www.josephswims.com

As to our £10,000 target, we realise that the 'easy' donations have been had. After a good planning meeting this morning we think we still have a couple of methods left to reach our immediate contacts, but now the hunt is on for a broader network of people to donate.

There are plenty of ideas in the pipeline, but with small children and busy working lives they're joining a queue of things to do. Facebook is our friend, we hope, so on the to do list for this week is to start reaching a wider network of people online. More news will follow.

Syria Raffleblog Day 7 - £951

Nearly made a thousand pounds in seven days - mainly it's whoopiedoo with a bit of aaaagghhhh thrown in to express the frustration that I couldn't drum up another 49 quid this afternoon. I was looking after both kids today and it felt a bit unfair to them to be tweeting madly and sending emails off to whoever I know who I've not tapped for cash yet. All the same, I was in front of the computer for far too long on a day when the sun shone and two small and lovely people were stuck in front of YouTube while I tap-tapped away.

The generosity of people I know very well, a bit, and not at all has been fantastic this past week, not to mention everyone who gave prizes. But I know that to reach the target of £10,000 is going to need a really big publicity push. And I'm not too sure how to do it.... so any ideas welcome.

Signing off till tomorrow. 

Syria Raffleblog Day 3 - £613

Look! Look! Over twice as much since Raffleblog last checked in! Morning all. Sore throat grumbles have just been offset by finding out that by the end of last night we'd reached £614. Am grinning like a loon - thank you all very much indeed, and a big hug to Ellen Burney who has tweeted prolifically over the last two days to raise awareness and direct people to the page.

It's my last day shifting at the Guardian today, so I'll be on the train back home tonight doing some jobs like writing copy for Hand in Hand for Syria who want to explain about the raffle to their local press. I also want to drum up a few more prizes from favourite brands, and think of some new ways to publicise the fundraiser.

Right. Am off into the rain with no coat, so my next report on Twitter will likely be somewhat damper than this one. I do just wonder if we might get to £1000 in the first week... any suggestions for how to get there by end of play on Monday, let me know in the comments section! And if you'd like to pass on the JustGiving page, it's here: http://www.justgiving.com/Syriamedicalaid

Syria Raffleblog: Day 2 - £254

Just a quick update tonight: am a bit shattered after a night on a friend's sofa (working in London till Friday, so two more of those to come) and an early false start on the Metropolitan line that took me way out of my way and made me late and flustered.

Today has seen two more fab prizes given for the raffle - a hamper of Fairtrade Divine chocolate from my very kind employer of ten years ago, and a weekend stay at possibly the most luxurious self-catering property I've ever seen, Rock Mill Estate in Membury Devon. So to Charlotte Borger, PR director for Divine and Jane, who owns Rock Mill Estate, a massive thank you. I must also say a heartfelt thank you to Lex Thornely (tweets under @LexPRnMarketing), PR supremo who has been so helpful in easing the way for me to ask his very generous clients for prizes.

I've been following today's extraordinary events in Damascus on Twitter, and from the reports of microbloggers on the ground and mainstream news organisations' reporting, there seems little doubt that a lot of people have been killed and terribly injured today. It always feels so odd to me to be sitting safely on one bit of the planet while some lives are changed utterly and others destroyed on another bit. It reminds me of a poem a foreign correspondent introduced me to when I mused on the same theme to him some years ago. Here it is - it's worth reading:

Musee des Beaux Arts, by WH Auden

About suffering they were never wrong,
The Old Masters; how well, they understood
Its human position; how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;
How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
For the miraculous birth, there always must be
Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating
On a pond at the edge of the wood:
They never forgot
That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.
In Breughel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water; and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on

So, we're up to £254 today. The money goes directly to Hand in Hand for Syria, who I think I'll be meeting up with for the first time in the next few weeks to find out more about how they work on the ground and how they get medical supplies into the areas under attack.

Please, please keep reading, keep retweeting my tweets and sharing the JustGiving details on your Facebook pages . Here's the link to the JustGiving page if you'd like to give some money and enter the raffle (make sure NOT to Gift Aid the money if you want to enter, and to put 'yes' to the question about whether your donation is in exchange for a raffle ticket). Right, that definitely is it for tonight. Cup of tea. Then glass of wine. Then sofa.

Syria Raffle Blog: Day One - £214

Decided to pop a few thoughts down every day til the JustGiving page gets to £10,000. Who am I kidding – course I won’t keep it up. But given that this is the first time in my life I’ve tried to raise money for anything other than my own shoe fund, it might be amusing to see some of the mistakes I make as I attempt to drum up the dosh. I’m sure there are all sorts of tried and tested fundraisers’ tricks to milking people for money (since I had kids I’m a sap for quite a few of them) but as I’ve got just a few minutes each day to source prizes and inviegle people into coughing up, I rather suspect I won’t be following the handbook.

First possible mistake  – was it a terrible idea to do a raffle? Of course I didn’t check the tax rules before deciding to ask for prizes, and at the last minute discovered that you can't buy a raffle ticket and allow the charity to reclaim Gift Aid on your money. 

On discovering this I hit the ‘edit’ button on the JustGiving page and wrote a bit of blurb explaining that it was a raffle fundraiser and there were all these fab prizes on offer, then added a P.S. to the effect that if you wanted to Gift Aid your donation you could opt out of the raffle. I didn’t think everyone would… but turns out that all the amazing people who have donated so far have Gift Aided their money.  Which means, if everyone else follows suit, that there will be a lot of verrrrrrrry nice stuff going begging. Hmm. What to do? Maybe I get the £250 haircut? It’s a bit of a dilemma. I’d love to know just how good a £250 haircut is...

The upshot of all this, however, is that I want to say to anyone who donates: the very fact that you’re giving is fantastic. For years and years I didn’t give a single penny to any cause, and was all “please, I work for a charity, that’s my contribution.” (I’m not referring to The Guardian here; I actually did work for charities). Honestly, I was such a selfish idiot. So please, don’t feel guilty about entering the raffle. This whole shebang has been designed as a raffle and you know, ravishing though I hope I’d look with a stonkingly expensive haircut, me nabbing the prizes isn’t quite in the spirit of the project. So, please donate, but please do also feel just as good about your donation when you tick "yes" to the bit about "have you given money in exchange for a raffle ticket".

To bring this bang up to date: we’re just over 24 hours since launch, and friends who I love dearly, people I know professionally and individuals who I don’t know at all have already given £214 – I'm so grateful and touched that you've cared enough to do that. 

Under JustGiving’s system, the money goes directly to Hand in Hand for Syria to buy drugs and medical equipment to help people who are being terribly injured every day. 

There are children, women and men who will live because of it.