Gogo Gives Back

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Dare to dream…

It’s about a year since the idea of buying our own property first came up and it definitely felt like a bit of a long shot at the time.  But, 2 months later we were launching our fundraising campaign to try and raise £100,000 to buy and renovate our Gogo Home.  I must admit that as we launched the campaign I did feel a bit terrified – it’s such a huge sum of money and I didn’t know how it was going to be possible.  I knew we had a big challenge ahead of us but looking back now over the 10 months that our fundraising campaign has been running I can see that something that I thought was going to be really hard work has turned out to be so humbling and encouraging.  We have now raised 75% of our target amount and once things have calmed down a bit after Covid-19 then we’ll give a final push to get us to our target.

If you want to go far go together…

It has been so incredible to see how so many people have got behind our dream and to see all the different ways they have generously, creatively and sacrificially supported us.  We’ve had fashions shows, concerts, quizzes, sponsored runs and walks and birthday fundraisers, as well as individuals giving very generous lump sums.  All of this takes a sacrifice of some kind, whether it’s time, money or skills.  It’s pretty humbling to think that people feel our dream is worth their sacrifice.

A different way to give…

The ladies at Gogo Olive also wanted to do a fundraiser and contribute towards their new home.  It’s important for them to feel ownership and they also didn’t want to be just sitting back while everyone else is doing the hard work for them!  We discussed different ideas of what they could do but started to realise that this is a difficult time to do a fundraiser in Zimbabwe.  Things are very tough financially for most people so we didn’t want to add extra strain or pressure.  This made me think about how being generous doesn’t have to involve money – you can be generous with your time, skills, resources…these thoughts led to a new idea and Gogo Gives Back was born!

Pay it forward…

To ‘Pay it forward’ is the concept of responding to someone’s kindness to you by being kind to someone else.  So many people have shown the Gogo Olive ladies kindness and while they can’t directly show kindness back to these people, they can show kindness to people in our community that are in need.  So that is what ‘Gogo Gives Back’ is all about, we are going to identify ways that we can help different people and groups that are around us – to show how much we appreciate the kindness and support that has been shown to us.

Blanket appeal…

The first project being undertaken by Gogo Gives Back is to knit blankets for the homeless, and others who may need them, as we go into winter here in Zimbabwe.  It gets much colder than I first imagined when I moved here!!  We are very grateful to have had donations of yarn to use for this and each of the ladies is in the process of knitting a colourful blanket that will be donated to those in need in the next week or two.

It’s only the beginning…

Doing projects like knitting blankets won’t raise any money to add to our fundraising target, but it is adding to the ladies lives by giving them an opportunity to be on the other side of generosity and to experience the blessing it is to bless other people.  It’s also a THANK YOU to all of you who are supporting us, we are doing this to show you how much we appreciate the sacrifices you have made for us.  We hope this is the start of lots of projects for Gogo Gives Back and we are open to suggestions!

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