Justgiving Awards 2010.

Matt here, tell you about our fab evening at the Justgiving Awards!

Emily was invited to present the award for Most Popular Fundraiser at Wednesday night’s inaugural Just Giving Awards, held at the RIBA building in London. It’s nice to know your place in the charity, when I was invited as her plus one ;-)

I don’t think either of us expected it to be as formal as it was, nor expected to see so many people, so we decided that a) yes, Emily, you should have written a speech earlier and b) we made a good decision on wearing matching pink outfits!

We met a number of “big” charities who told us how much they admire us as a charity. Upon hearing that our entire team is built of purely volunteers, many of them were left speechless.

The highlight of our (and well, everyone’s) night was waiting for Major Phil Packer to speak. If you’re unfamiliar with his story, think back to the London Marathon last year and the man that walked it in 14 days…It’s quite incredible hearing this man’s journey and more importantly to hear of his plans for the future. A very selfless man, he’s now dedicating his time to young people & young people with disabilities. It’s well worth checking out his website and seeing if you can help him along the way by visiting his Justgiving page. We had to track him down after the main event as there was no way Emily was going to leave without a picture with him!

I’d like to say that Emily was speechless when her turn came to announce the award for most Popular Fundraiser but I think we’d all know I’d be lying! It went down very well and we were both surprised at how many people put their hand up when she asked who is definitely on the Organ Donor Register. I was amazed at how many people have been following her story - she’s something of a mini-celebrity in the JG towers.

It must have been incredibly hard to choose the winners as everyone in every category had an inspirational story to tell. Take a look at just a few that stood out to me:

Sophie Atay www.justgiving.com/sophie-appeal

Robyn Higgins www.justgiving.com/robyn-appeal

Alice Halstead www.justgiving.com/alice-halstead

In summary, everywhere you turned there was an inspirational story waiting to be told. I know we both left feeling very positive and full of ideas for LLTGL’s future. If we haven’t said it already, we’re also eternally thankful to all the advocates, volunteers & of course Trustee’s that help make it all happen for us.

It’s my first blog post… be kind ;-)

Matt