Youth Alpha

“When I found out that I had to raise around £1500 to cover all of the expenses of the trip I was quite thrown by the amount.”…

… George, 17, a member of HTB Youth is shortly to board a plane for Ghana.

He’s one of 17 young people heading to Africa for a Youth Alpha GAT. But, here’s the challenge! Each member needs to raise £1500….

In two installments, we bring to you how George has been tackling the fundraising experience head on.

Today, George shares his car boot sale stories…

“I’m going on a youth GAT mission in the October 2011 half term with some other Yr 12’s. When I first signed up for it I was not quite sure what to expect. When I found out that I had to raise around £1500 to cover all of the expenses of the trip I was quite thrown by the amount.

I discussed with my mum what would be some good ways to raise the finance for the trip, some of my initial ideas were quickly thrown out of the window, such as importing and selling cricket bats from India….

My mum was first to strike with the ideas of doing some car boot sales and cooking a sit down dinner for her and some of her friends. I was edgy about both ideas, but decided to give the car boot sale a shot.

In the Easter holidays my mother, little brother and I all headed down the A3 at the preposterous hour of 6:30 AM on a Sunday morning! We set up camp and were swamped early on by some dealers; after a great start I was feeling quietly confident.

At 12 noon the crowds of the morning sales had lulled and so we decided to call it a day; we packed up and headed to my Grandmother’s house where we had a Stream Farm leg of lamb and counted the earnings - it totted up to roughly £200!

As my mum didn’t want to have to unpack the car from the car boot sale she was kind enough to do another sale on my behalf in London with my Grandmother the following Sunday (I was on ‘Revise’ where a lot of revision…. and air raids took place).

The London car boot sale took a much higher level of sales, which I was very surprised to hear totted up to roughly £300! And this was all ‘’things’’ my mother found in our house that she decided we didn’t need anymore!!”

Wow, £500 raised from a bunch of stuff found at home – if you need to raise money for an expedition, like George, why not get creative and think about how you can best use stuff you don’t need anymore! Interested in finding out more about Youth Alpha GATs? Then check here.