Our Team Mum appeal launched on 1 Februrary at The Shindig, one month ago. So far we’ve raised £88,802 towards our target of £150,000. It’s been a whirlwind, but I think these are my favourite moments from the campaign so far.
Our launch at The Shindig
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Hundreds of you flocked to The Shindig, our annual celebration party, to launch Team Mum. For the first time ever, Cherio and James from our Kenyan team were able to join us in London for the party and it was so lovely to get the chance to hang out together. We even had a special guest from the Department of International Development – Lord Bates joined us to speak about the impact of UK Aid Match. We all enjoyed delicious food provided by our generous and brilliant friends at CH&Co.
Ride Africa riders met our Team Mum Storytellers in person
The biggest chunk of our fundraising so far has come from the heroic efforts of our Februray Ride Africa riders. After a spectacular and challenging ride to Meru, they visited some of the women Child.org is working with in this community. We had a special thank you to deliver on the visit – the team presented each of the young mums who appears in our Team Mum campaign with a printed and framed selection of the beautiful family photos we took of them. We also delived cards signed by Child.org supporters and friends, thanking them for allowing us to use their stories here in the UK to fundraise. It meant a lot to me to be able to thank these women for their help, having been creating content out of their real life experience for months.
Team Mum Scotland join Ride Africa
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With huge thanks to @catqb for holding a Scottish launch event for #TeamMum last week! We had a fab time meeting loads of passionate UK mums who are interested in working with us to make pregnancy and birth safer in rural Kenya, and chatting about our upcoming ride across Kenya together. Don’t forget, if you donate or fundraise for Team Mum before 30 April, all donations will be matched by the UK government. #ukaidmatch #party #mumsunite #catcubie #scottishtv #rideafrica
A post shared by Child.org (@childdotorg) on Feb 18, 2019 at 8:04am PST
A team of bold and brilliant Scottish women are joining the pack for our very special all-women Ride Africa in July, and TV presenter Cat Cubie organised a launch in Edinburgh to bring more on board. It was attended by dozens of influencial mums, including A Place in The Sun presenter Jean Johansson, who has also signed up to take on Ride Africa in July, as she reported last week in her Scottish Mail on Sunday column. Other riders include partners from the wonderful Cuckooz Nest, and our own Head of Creative, Naomi. This ride is going to be incredible.
In case you missed my @Sunday_Mail column, I pray a test from @UniStrathclyde for sepsis becomes available soon, I have my say on Shamima Begum, I’m excited about the line up for @TRNSMTfest and I’m getting on my bike for @Childdotorg #RideAfrica pic.twitter.com/9bgOJB9B8J
— Jean Johansson (@JeanJohansson) February 24, 2019
Charity Fast-Trackers rally behind Team Mum
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The Child.org team went to Utopy’s Charity Fast-Track Bootcamp weekend, to support the Fast-Trackers who attended. These guys are all running their own challenges, recruiting and managing teams of volunteer fundraisers to support Team Mum. Many are taking on the Sukuma Wiki challenge – living on kale for a week or organising Walk Like A Mum walks. The passion and excitement from these future charity leaders was infectious and it’s no surprise to see many of them already leading large and successful teams!
Team Dad
When dads support Team Mum, it makes my ovaries hurt. It was lovely to chat to dad blogger Stuart of Father-Hood.co.uk about his support of the campaign.
Motherhood is universal
Seeing our comms partners post and blog and promote the campaign has been an eye-opener. What’s really resonated with me have been the answers to our “What do you wish you’d been told?” question on social media. There are so many similarities, and a few big breathtaking differences, between the experiences of the mums we spoke to in the UK and in Kenya. I look forwrad to sharing more of these over the next two months.
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Working side-by-side with some incredible volunteers
This campaign simply wouldn’t be running without the support of an army of skilled volunteers, most of whom are Charity Fast-Trackers or alumni. From creating and scheduling a mountain of social media content, monitoring our reach to report to DfID, sending out resources, and supporting comms partners, a massive thank you for all your hard work so far.
Clary & Peg baby bloomers
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Our Kenyan Team worked with Clary & Peg to pick the fabrics for their special Team Mum products in Nairobi. Just look at these precious little baby bloomers! Gorgeous. (You can buy them here.)
Otis goes viral
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When Rozie from Jungle Creations came on board and make a crafts video to promote Team Mum, we both agreed it would be great to have a real mum and baby in the video. My sister Daisy and nephew Otis were very happy to step in, though I think my whole family was taken by surprise when the amount of views hit 2.7 million. TO be fair, he does look very cute in Rozie’s finger-knitted hat.
Support from my family and friends
I’ve been overwhelmed by the dedicated support of my family and friends for this campaign and want to thank them in this blog. They’ve been generous with their time, advice, money and support. They are performing at Vault festival, holding supper clubs, making their work colleagues hold Royal Baby Sweepstakes, holding coffee mornings, poetry evenings, contacting local press, coming to events, donating, hosting quizzes, cooking me dinner every night when I get home late and appearing in my content. Team Mum really has rallied all our personal networks here at the charity, and I want to thank everyone who has personally been supporting me and the rest of our little team.
What’s next?
This week, our brilliant programme of shows at Vault Festival kicks off. We’re holding a big concert in Covent Garden for Mothers’ Day. We’ll be asking everyone to buy a mum a pack of baby essentials as a Mother’s Day gift.
We have thousands still to raise, and we need your help. Please, donate here, find fundraising ideas here, order posters and t-shirts here. Come to our events. Tell us what we can do to help you to support Team Mum. If you donate or raise donations before 30 April, they will be matched by the UK government.
Two months to go. We can do this, guys.