CONGRATULATIONS to Cheerleaders 'Waves' (Brighton & Sussex) for winning Society of the Month for November. Here's what they had to say about the event they ran that bagged them the award.
#1 What was the objective of your event?
Pink Night is an event close to our hearts. We hold this event every year since 2009 in order to raise money for Mentor UK. This charity focuses on raising awareness of drug and alcohol misuse amongst children and young people.
We are proud to represent this charity and create this event for Hester Stewart. She was a Waves cheerleader who used to study at Sussex University. In 2009 she took a legal high at our awards evening and unfortunately died as a result of this. The main objective of this night is to raise as much awareness for the charity as possible and honor Hester.
The event is based on the colour pink as this was Hester's favorite colour which is why we encourage everyone to wear pink on the night and it is also incorporated into our uniform.
#2 When did your event take place?
15th November 2017
#3 Where did your event take place?
Our event takes place in Pryzm, a large nightclub venue where we set up stalls. These stalls sell food such as Papa Johns pizza, Krispy Kreme doughnuts and pick and mix sweets. We also sell raffle tickets. All the food and raffle prices have been donated from different shops in Brighton after going around and asking for support. We offer face paint, glitter and temporary tattoos.
We also go around with buckets during the night asking for any loose change or donations for the charity.
We decided to organise it in Pryzm as is one of the biggest club/nightouts in Brighton attended by students.
#4 How many people came?
1400
#5 How did the attendees participate?
Most of the people who attended participated in some way by either entering the raffle, paying for glitter/face paint, buying food, donating change to our money buckets and many people came wearing pink!
We also offered the sale of pink waves t shirts where a proportion of the sales went towards the overall total. A donation page was also set up for anyone that could not attend and is still open for donations:
https://uk.virginmoneygiving.com/fundraiser-display/showROFundraiserPage? userUrl=wavescheerleaders&isTeam=true
We also have raised awareness for the charity through participation. From these activities, we managed to raise over £485, a record-breaking amount!
#6 What did you learn?
We have all learned that it is important to understand that many substance/drugs are legal but without proper understanding they can be very dangerous and seriously impact people's health, and it is vital to raise awareness to all the students who don’t know much about it. Therefore, we decided to organize our event on a student night.
#7 How does your event benefit students?
The aim of our event is to make people understand they must be careful when dealing with substances which may be legal but can have a devastating impact. Students don’t know much about these topics and they tend to have the curiosity and the desire to try them. Therefore, we hope that our event benefits students in terms of responsiveness towards general drugs.
