Garstang Town Council organised it’s first ever Scarecrow Festival this summer and chose Matt’s Fund at CRY, and Macmillan in the Northwest as their official charities. They asked a group of 4 local ladies who do a lot of fundraising for different causes and who are known as Team ShazzAnn, to help them fundraise. As well as the Y3P challenge for 50 walkers, there was also a huge raffle at the festival itself (raising £1,500), a quiz night and several other fabulous fundraisers within the community.
Yesterday Barry, Zoe & I attended a presentation where Macmillan & CRY were each given cheques for £8,990. At the 3 day Scarecrow Festival Team Matt also had our own stand. Visitors were invited to choose one of the 500 homemade gingerbread scarecrows and to decorate it for a small donation. We also sold handmade scarecrow cards, fabulous corn dolly ear-rings and CRY merchandise. It was a fabulous 3 days, people came from far and wide to the festival.
We heard some sad stories of others who had been lost to YSCD, we heard some brilliant accounts of how people had been helped by CRY and we raised £729.16 to boot! We have since received further donations of £5 & £10 making a total of £744.16. An additional £70 was collected by ‘The Moorings’ – a canal side neighbourhood within Garstang who had arranged to fundraise themselves.
In total then the Scarecrow Festival raised an absolutely outstanding £10,004.16 for CRY! We cannot thank everyone who was involved with this enough, so many generous people put in so much time and effort for the benefit of others – amazing!
Paula Hesmondhalgh
