Over the last month I have worked pretty furiously with a lovely group of Melbourne Bloggers – Kathy, Kate, Marita, Amanda and Shae on a Community Blogging Christmas Event.
The idea behind Community Blogging is bloggers supporting and working with not for profit organisations in the local community. For our first event, we held a Christmas catch up for Melbourne Bloggers and asked some brands to come along and be a part of it. The difference with this blogging event was that instead of the bloggers receiving products from the brands involved, they agreed to donate the product to two amazing community groups:
Thanks to the kind donations of the sponsors of this event, the community groups received/will receive:
- Cash donations
- Household cleaning products
- Self care products
- Toys
- Craft supplies
- DVDs
- Toothbrushes
The Sponsors
The event was held at the Victorian Archives Centre in North Melbourne. It was a gorgeous venue and we would like to thank:
- Public Records Office Victoria – for allowing us to use the venue without charge.
- Cafe 99 – who have a cafe at the venue and provided excellent catering at great rates for us.
There were three key sponsors who made it possible for us to host the event:
PECAN FAN
Yes that is me in the middle of the Pecan, having some fun with Shae. Pecan Fan gave generous cash donations to each organisation. You can find great recipes and all sorts of fun trivia on the I’m A Pecan Fan facebook page.
ECOSTORE
EcoSTORE have a beautiful range of natural skincare and green cleaning products. You can pick up their products easily at Woolworths stores around the country.
EcoSTORE has such a great company ethos. They are a family company run out of New Zealand, where they have a carbon neutral factory and they already contribute to their local community in New Zealand through the Fairground Foundation. The Fairground Foundation is a charitable organisation that is funded by ecostore profits to promote sustainability through ‘on-the-ground’ action. You can find out more about what the foundation does here.
KIDS BUSINESS
Christie Nicholas is the author of “The Mum Who Roared” and also the founder of Kids Business. Kids Business is a Marketing & Public Relations company that is famous for their fab Bloggers Brunches, where they connect brands and bloggers.
An underlying philosophy Christie has had across the projects she has worked on is inspiring mums to love and look after themselves. In 2012 Kids Business is launching a project where they will sponsor a series of posts written by mums who blog. The post are not brand driven, but are posts that will inspire the bloggers community to be happy with themselves, take care of themselves and acknowledge their achievements. I think this is a great way to then be able to pay it forward to groups in your community who need support.
Thanks also to Colorific who donated craft supplies to St Kilda Mums:
Maclean Mums who donated toothpaste to the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre:
Bundaberg Drinks who supplied the drinks from their cafe range for the event:
The Community Organisations
ST KILDA MUMS
I loved listening to Jessica from St Kilda Mums speak with such passion about her local community. It was very inspiring and Jessica made such sense when she said “We need Werribee mums, Box Hill mums, Richmond mums”. Locality works! If you think this is something you would like to do, St Kilda Mums are happy to share all their processes and info they have to help you set up your group locally.
You can email Jessica at stkildamums@gmail.com and can keep up to date with their work via their facebook page.
ASYLUM SEEKER RESOURCE CENTRE
We heard about the grass roots origins of the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre (ASRC) from Robyn. The ASRC started as a student project by Kon Karapanagiotidis over 10 years ago. It is now Australia’s leading asylum seeker organization, providing support and advice for those seeking asylum in Australia.
Robyn spoke passionately about the people the ASRC support and it was quite emotional. A beautiful example given by Robyn, about the wonderful level of support they receive from the community, was about the Sunshine West Primary School. The school donated 100% of the funds raised from their school fete – $3000 to the ASRC. So amazing!
My favourite quote from Robyn was:
If you treat people well you will bring out the best in them.
Everyone is welcome to vist the ASRC and they have four Volunteer Information Sessions through out the year. The sessions have finished for this year, but you can check in on their volunteers page for updates here.
Or if you cannot donate time at the moment, I have mentioned previously on the blog, you can donate food and other essential items via Survival Network of the ASRC.
The Bloggers
{Kyrstie, Norlin, Toushka, Shae and Laney}
And thanks to the bloggers who came along at this crazy busy time of year. You can see more photos of bloggers and the event over on flickr.
Special thanks to Kate from Picklebums who took all the photos you will see on flickr and that I have used in this post (with the exception of the Colorific photo). Kate also created our Community Blogging logo – she is very talented.
There was such a great spirit to the event and we were very appreciative to those bloggers who couldn’t make it but tweeted and retweeted on the #blog4community hashtag. It trended on the evening which was a fab effort.
We are currently seeking ideas and support on how we can do more Community Blogging in 2012 – please head to the Get Involved page if you would like to be a part of it!