Well it is only a couple of days away now – the start of my 2013 21 Challenge! I am looking forward to doing the challenge again, as I was last year too, I am also a little bit daunted about the prospect of posting every day for 21 days, but it is for such an important cause.
Blogging from my warm and comfortable home and playing with my kids is not really hard. Hard is sleeping on the streets when you are young and vulnerable. The 21 Challenge runs from 1 – 21st June. 21st June is the winter solstice. It is the shortest day and the longest night of the year. In the depth of winter it would be a very tough time for youth who have no place to call home.
The 21 Challenge is an initiative of Open Family Australia who been providing a range of Outreach services to young people experiencing high complex needs.
This is the second year I will be undertaking the 21 Challenge. You can see last year’s posts here. My challenge this year is to undertake and activity with at least one of our kids and to blog daily the activities we do. This year as well as home based activities, I will also be getting out and about and reviewing kids’s activities in Melbourne. We haven’t left the suburbs as much as we usually do this year so far, so I am using the challenge to help me get out of this rut too!
Doing the activity daily for me will be the easy part of this challenge, blogging daily will be the toughest part! I will blog the activity each evening, using mainly photos from my phone and a few sentences with tips or descriptions.
What you can do!
The 21 Challenge is the key fundraising event for Open Family Australia to fund their outreach programs for at-risk and homeless young people. I am making this challenge my annual fund raising event and would like to raise as much money as I can for Open Family.
You can take a challenge yourself or if you have read info here on Planning With Kids and enjoyed it, you can head to my 21 Challenge page and donate.
I have set a goal of $1000 and would love any donation you can afford to help me reach it. All payments are processed securely with credit card details encrypted in line with Level 1 PCI Compliance. Open Family Australia does not see, or store, your credit card details. Donations are tax deductible.
Please know that any donation however small is welcome. I know at times I have gone to donate to someone’s cause and felt awkward as I didn’t feel I could give the minimum donation that was listed. Please do not feel you need to do those amounts. Imagine if 100 readers of Planning With Kids donated $5 each – I would be halfway towards my total!! So whatever it is your budget can afford, myself and Australian youth will be very grateful.
Another addition for 2013 to help me raise more funds for Open Family, is that I have invited brands to be involved. There will be a few posts which will include a review/giveaway. I will receive no money personally for these posts, but the brands reviewed will be making a donation to my fundraising. These posts will clearly be labelled review posts at the beginning of each post. You can read more info about my challenge here.
Thanks in advance for your support – Nic.