Today we launch The ATFV Toy Story, a major fundraising campaign to refurbish the Play Room within Morriston Hospital, supplying new toys and equipment and at the same time showing our appreciation for our NHS.
Every year for the last 12 years ATFV has raised money for the Children’s Wards at Morriston Hospital and embarked on an annual Christmas toy shopping spree at Smyths Toystore. With a minimum of £1,000 to spend and a generous 10% store discount, we’d hit the aisles with the Play Nurses and a personal shopper and fill trolley after trolley to restock the Play Room. It’s become a cherished tradition and our top charitable priority.
This year we failed. Totally. We didn’t even raise enough to donate a box of Christmas crackers.
There isn’t a charitable concern on Earth that hasn’t been hampered by the far reaching and restrictive effects of a global pandemic, and your fundraising fanzine is no exception. Covid-19 simultaneously wiped out our ability to stage our regular events and robbed me of a whole office full of people to plunder on a weekly basis through various raffles and money raising gimmicks.
In addition to this, my ‘Day Job’ has never been more intense, the stakes never higher in my paid employment and working from home permanently has eroded the time I devote to all things ATFV – basically I’ve devoted all of my time to my job and my output elsewhere has fallen off a cliff.
But the uncomfortable truth is that all of the above are convenient excuses and I could have found a way…and as reminder after reminder of donations in years gone by popped up in social media apps like Facebook and TimeHop, my heart broke with sadness and shame.
And so I resolved to put things right by launching The ATFV Toy Story and finding ways around the current restrictions, until such time as a modicum of normality is restored and Covid is deemed less of a threat.
Considering the barriers to raising money at the moment – including the very real disastrous economic fallout from Covid – The ATFV Toy Story target of £1,000 is a tough one, but if we can tap into the outpouring of support for our NHS that we saw throughout June and July of 2020 then we’ve got a chance of hitting that mark by Easter ’21. If it takes longer than that then so be it…
…but we WILL hit that target!
We’re 1% of the way there already after an initial donation of £10 by yours truly to start things off, but in order to reach this target and raise the funds needed to buy essential toys, distractions and equipment for the Children’s Wards we are going to need YOUR help!
How can you contribute and help make The ATFV Toy Story a success? Making a donation is the simple answer but it’s not the only way. For a start you can save the links to our JustGiving and dedicated Facebook pages (linked below) and then share them with as many people as possible.
I’m actively looking for volunteers to get involved and help us plan and deliver some fundraising events – most likely online ones for the foreseeable future, not something I’m particularly skilled at delivering! And I’m also looking for local businesses to get involved, again to help spread the word or to donate raffle prizes or auction items.
Our NHS has been phenomenal all throughout the Covid-19 pandemic, but then it has been phenomenal before Covid crashed the world. If everyone that fell over themselves to clap the longest or the loudest back in June donated just one pound to The ATFV Toy Story we’d probably hit our target by the end of today!
If you really want to show your appreciation for our hardworking Doctors and Nurses, and at the same time provide a sick child with a toy to play with to take away some of the pain and fear of a hospital stay then please get involved with The ATFV Toy Story…donate a quid, share the JustGiving page, like the Facebook page.
Help us create a Toy Story with the happiest of endings…