Luss Charity Advent Fair Raises Funds for St George's Ethiopia
Luss Advent Fair, held at the Loch Lomond Arms Hotel, raised over £2,000 for St George’s Ethiopia, a charitable school in Gondar province set up by Sir Malcolm & Lady Colquhoun to provide free education to some of the poorest children in the community. Many of the students are orphans and all of the children would otherwise have received no education. St George’s provides them not only with an education but also school meals, uniform and health checks.
Many local business again exhibited at what was the busiest Luss Advent Fair yet and without their continued support and attendance the fair would not be able to exist.
Returning exhibitor Denise from Helensburgh Flowers said:
"We were delighted to be involved in Luss Advent Fair, in support of the St George’s Ethiopia appeal. Our wreath making workshops were a great success and we all had a fun and creative afternoon. The feedback from everyone attending was fantastic and the enthusiasm and sense of fun was fabulous, everyone went home with a beautiful wreath that will have pride of place on their doors for the festive season."
First time exhibitor Kaye Cavendish from Rosie Loves Bruce commented:
“As a first time exhibitor at Luss Advent Fair I found the atmosphere warm and friendly, with an exceptional standard of fellow artisans. The added value of raising money and giving for such an important cause made the Christmassy spirit that extra bit special.”
Further information about St Georges:
Northwood African Education Foundation was established in 2011. The charity’s aim was to build and run a school for orphans and the most vulnerable children in Ethiopia, integrating high standards of education with the best of the Ethiopian curriculum. Named after St George, the patron saint of Ethiopia and England, St George’s is an independent co-educational school. The school opened in 2014, offering a free education to help children who would not otherwise have had such a chance. The charity’s ambition is now to build St George’s to secondary level, with 700 children aged 4 to 18 by 2022. The charity has now embarked on new programmes to demonstrate their potential to be a force for good across the local community, supporting jobs, promoting health and wellbeing and sharing facilities and expertise with other local schools. One of these initiatives for 2018-19 is the Tailoring Project Community Initiative, outlined below. The funds required for this are £2,000. The funds raised by Luss Advent Fair will be a valuable part of the fundraising for the charitable school and its community initiatives.
• £2000 would pay for the sewing machines and set up cost required for 2018/2019 Tailoring Project Community Initiative: the aim of this project is to target vulnerable and poor females in our direct community and train them in tailoring skills (traditionally in Ethiopia, tailoring is a male profession). This would involve employing a tailor trainer for prolonged period of time (6 months in the outset), to train a small group of identified women in skills required to mend, alter and create clothing and crafts which could be used or sold. Materials initially used will be uniform items that needs repairing for continued use, or that can be altered and used in other ways. We would also hope to be producing the ‘Days for Girls’ sanitation bags for distribution in the community.
We were delighted to be supported this year by performances from Lomond School, Hermitage Academy, Margaret Rose School of Dance, Clann an Drumma, Rachelle Rhielle and Tartan Harmony.
Executive Director of St George's Ethiopia, Evrim Maitland commented:
“ Our aim is to use the power of education so that every pupil, family and community member has the chance to thrive - building new skills is the key to ensuring community engagement and the long term sustainability of our program; the tailoring project is the first of many. We are incredibly grateful for everyone who has been involved in helping raise over £2,000 at Luss Advent Fair 2018.”