It’s been a while since I last had anything to update you with, which is because we’ve taken a break from fundraising for now. Amy spent time with her girls during the summer, and had some big decisions to make regarding the future of Butterflies Community Store and the Kaleidoscope Project.
As you will all know Amy’s H.O.P.E. 20 was set up to mark the 20th anniversary of Amy being diagnosed with Myasthenia Gravis. The aim of Amy’s H.O.P.E. 20 was to raise money to give back to the organisations that had helped Amy during the last 20 years. The fundraising began in the summer of 2013 with selling at car boot sales to help fund three skydives. These skydives were followed by Christmas Fayres and the main event of an Afternoon Tea. We had expected to stop there, but money was donated by Calmore Slimming World, and the fundraising went on including three further skydives in September 2014, a Christmas Fayre in December 2014 and an Easter Fayre in April 2015, plus Amy did an abseil for Myaware in April.
Below is a breakdown of the donations made by Amy’s H.O.P.E. 20
29th March 2014 Myasthenia Gravis Association (Hampshire Branch) £2000.00
29th March 2014 Stanley Graveson Ward, Wessex Neurological Centre £500.00
29th March 2014 Donation of 2 personal DVD players for use on Stanley
Graveson Ward, Wessex Neurological Centre approx cost £150.00
29th March 2015 Myaware (Hampshire Branch) £500.00
29th March 2015 Myaware (Hampshire Branch) from Webb Ivory Sales £134.00
Summer 2015 Stanley Graveson Ward (before closure of ward) £200.00
5th August 2015 Southampton Hospital Charity (Dylan’s Quest) £500.00
GRAND TOTAL OF MONEY RAISED £3984.00
PLUS
April 2015 – Amy’s abseil raised over £600 which went direct to Myaware
Dylan’s Quest
The last donation made was to Dylans quest. Dylan’s fundraising is for the Children’s Neurology Department at Southampton General Hospital. Amy learned about this fundraising during one of her stays in the hospital. So far they have raised over £5000. They are now raising funds to convert their home so Dylan can leave hospital. Dylan has his own facebook page, a copy of which can be seen below.
In addition to the funds raised, we also raised awareness of Myasthenia Gravis, now many more people know about this life threatening disease and how it affects the daily life of those with it.
Butterflies Community Store
Unfortunately, after much deliberation Amy has decided to close Butterflies Community Store. The shop and tearooms were launched on 29th March 2014 and were open for 18 months, during that time they supported a number of charities and local organisations. These include
Bartley Skate Park Project (https://www.facebook.com/pages/Bartley-skate-park-community-group)
Macmillan Cancer Research, Breast Cancer Research, Bras for Africa
Salvation Army Homes, Oxford Street, Southampton Jordan House of Society St James 
Myaware Help the Homeless, Southampton Syrian Refugee Appeal
Childrens Ward, Southampton General Hospital Toy Appeal
plus Butterflies Community store helped two individual families who lost everything in house fires
They have also worked in partnership with Family Mosaic,
Catch Extended Services, SSJ Rehabilatation, Minstead Training Trust
A BIG “Thank You” to Amy, her workforce and volunteers for all the hard work they have put into helping these organisations and the local community during the last few years.
The Kaleidoscope Project will continue to trade.
This is a shop that once again has the community in mind. It is aimed at smaller businesses, who cannot afford to “go it alone”, or who don’t want a whole shop but would like to dip their toe in the water and see what interest is out there for their product. They can rent either shelving or floor space either short or long term. This window of opportunity is available to anyone, so if you have a hobby that you would like to become a business but don’t want the commitment or expense of taking on a premises yourself, if you are an existing business that would like to advertise your product by getting it seen, if you have a small amount of stock to sell, or for any other reason them why not contact Amy.
Well, that’s all for now, but I’m sure we’ll be back at some point ……………
amyshope20 