Good Friday Report

Good Friday Appeal Report

As all Uncle Bobs gear up for their Branch and Group Annual Meetings and think about the pilgrimage to the gorgeous haven of Drouin for the Club’s Annual General Meeting, the Good Friday Appeal tends to be forgotten, after all it’s a long way off….or is it?

Since our last report, the Good Friday Appeal Sub-Committee have wrapped up for another year and organised the starting line up for next years Sub-Committee. John Traill who captained the team last year has accepted the position of Convenor again with Colin Wedd as the Vice-Captain. Kayley Wedd has accepted the position of minute secretary (by default as no one else wanted the job!) with Craig Broderick as her second in charge. Ian Hunter is again your Country Liaison representative so please, use Ian! If you have a concern/grievance/idea, then Ian is the man to talk to; he is your voice at the Sub-Committee meeting. So, don’t be shy!

That being said….what have we done? The warehouse at Tullamarine resembles some kind of normality with the clean up working bee completed apart from deregistering hundreds of collection tubs. This task will be completed hopefully by the end of the year so we can look forward to 2011 without any major tasks (other than putting lids on the tubs and registering them out) having to be done.

In late June, a number of Uncle Bobs were invited to the Royal Childrens Hospital for the "Thank You" dinner. This is an amazing and uplifting experience to be part of and if you don’t have a sense of pride after you walk away from the night, then you are a pretty tough nut to crack. It was incredible to see little Isaac (the 2010 poster boy) there with his mum and dad. Moments like these are an important reminder to why we do what we can to help the kids. If you have access to the internet and our Club website, there is a photo of some of our members with our Club Ambassador, Emoke Bakacs, with a beautiful cheque that was presented to the hospital of over $14 Million dollars. I am sure that they will spend the money wisely.

Our next big activity is to help sell the AFL Premiership posters (previously known as the WEG poster). Now, who knows who will be up for the Big One in September…I’m sure that we all have our opinions, but this is a terrific way of promoting the Club and raising some very valuable money for the Appeal. If you can spare around 3 hours on that last day of September please contact Head Office to register your interest and as soon as more information is available someone will be in touch.

I will warn you that it is extremely full on and the supporters can be very excited and desperate to grab their piece of history especially if it’s been a long time coming.

After that, we wait. What do we wait for? Well, the start of the New Year. You see, we realise that the Club needs to fundraise just as hard (if not harder) for money to be used for General Funds, to provide support and equipment for sick and disabled children all over this great state.

Good Friday Report

Can we really believe that by the time this article goes to print, Good Friday will be completely done and dusted for another year, but I am sure that the memories are still fresh and the pride remains.

Before we can start again for the New Year, we must take time to remember and thank those that have helped us in reaching a magical total of $401,300.00.

Firstly to the men and women of the CFA and MFB Charity Running Group for thinking outside the box and organising a 24 hour relay in the heart of metropolitan Melbourne (Bourke Street Mall to be exact) from 9am Thursday to 9am Good Friday morning. These men and women ran (and at times walked) around (and around) two blocks with their colleagues conducting a collection at both ends of the Mall. I can guarantee that when their tins were received by the Club, not a cent more could have been put into them. A fantastic total was raised of $15,397.20 and this is before any collections were started at the MFB street corners! The MFB and friends helped us again this year with volunteer collectors at the Eastern Hill corners and also the Eastern Freeway/Hoddle Street corner. We then had to add another $20,416.45 to our total. As you can see by these two amazing achievements, we would be lost without the warm hearts and kind hands of our firefighters. To the organising committee of the relay and street corner collections, a huge THANK YOU from us and the kids and we hope that our special bond continues in the many years to come.

Again our friends from Freemasonry Victoria came to the fore with the supply of arms and legs (and everything in between) to supply a happy band of volunteers at 7-Eleven Convenience Stores around metropolitan Melbourne and Geelong. For those that stayed up for the Club’s cheque presentation, you would have seen a new face as the face of the Freemasons. On behalf of the Club, we welcome Mr Ian McMurtry (State Co-ordinator of the FV Task Force) to our group and hope that with time, he will have an opportunity to drink in the Good Friday air and become hooked like so many of us have become. With the help of these volunteers, a total of $35,792.80 was added to our ever growing total.

Now…a few honourable mentions.

A special thanks goes to the members of the Bellarine Group who took up the challenge to collect at the corner of Latrobe/Kilgour and Noble streets in Geelong. A terrific amount of $3,379.00 was collected which could have been more, as I heard a rumour that the only reason they stopped collecting was that they had run out of collection tubs! Rest assured, we will make sure that more are given to you next year. A special thanks also to Lynette Willey who created a mini counting room and counted the Geelong tubs for us so they could be added to this years total.

To Sarah Last and her collection crew at the corner of Flinders Street and Swanston Street. A great effort to raise $5,978.40 which was $2000ish more than last year! Great work Sarah!

Keeping it in the CFA family was Mitch and Sam at the corner of Anderson Street and the Maroondah Highway in Lilydale. You sure did look a little tired at the end of the night but we are proud to see a total of $8,415.80 - $3000ish more than last year! Well done kids!!!!!

A special mention also goes to our corner visitation crews who acted as "go-fors" this year with the absence of a carpool to do our collection pick ups. Thanks guys and gals for making those extra trips around so the tubs could be brought into the counting room early.

To our Bob Bunyip Bunnies – yes, you did read right! A group of young volunteers helped sell merchandise and promote the Uncle Bobs Club in our marquee on the Etihad concourse where we also enlisted the help of 3 fabulous face painters. Its ideas like these that need to be encouraged and expanded on, if our Club is to survive.

On a personal level, I would like to take the opportunity to say thank you to Greg Reaburn, Ian Hunter, John Traill and Lesley Smith who were still going like Energizer Bunnies at midnight back at Tullamarine HQ unloading the kindly donated truck (by MIS Business Warehouse) with all of our supplies. I know what kind of effort this is especially when you were all there at 7am that morning loading it! Without you I think Colin and I would still be there, so thanks!!!!

Also, thank you to the Good Friday Appeal Sub-Committee. We may be few but our hearts are well and truly there. Thank you to those that gave up their time for working bees (official and unofficial), the cleaning of our tubs, the sourcing of equipment. Without you, we would have been a little stuck, so thanks! To John Traill for being our captain, we made it through another year of a few "challenges" to overcome but I guess one thing that I have learnt is that no matter what happens, we will overcome it!

So enough from the city, I look forward to reading all of the Branch and Group reports on what happened in the country areas on Good Friday. Without you all, the Club would not have been able to hand over that gorgeous cheque! Without you the Club would not survive. I look forward to catching up with your stories and hope to see you at the next General Meeting.

Kayley Wedd

GFA Sub-Committee

　See some photos of some of the helpers for Good Friday