May Awareness Month 2024
This year EDSNZ held two nationwide fundraising events, our fourth Annual Distance Challenge and our thirdannual Read-A-Thon. As a community, members participated in our online events, as well as support calls from EDSNZ, and took to social media to share awareness materials on a variety of topics created by EDSNZ and used the hashtag #EDSNZMAY2024 to get the word out!
EDSNZ are incredibly proud of our community in all their varying methods of raising awareness this May and thank you to everyone who participated in our event! Read on for more information about this year’s Awareness Efforts!
EDSNZ Distance Challenge 20234
Our fourth annual Distance Challenge kicked off May Awareness Month. Our goal was to see how many times our community could cross the Cook Strait when we band together, because together we dazzle! We picked routes of varying lengths, with the option to choose your own distance as well as method of achieving your goal – walk, run, swim, ride or roll to your goal was our motto.
We had 9 individuals sign up this year to take the challenge, 1 team was created, and they were amazing – as a collective we traveled 387km! We crossed the Cook Strait 17 and a half times!
Our participants took some amazing walks through beautiful parts of the country which you can see below, gorgeous beaches, still lakes, incredibly forests, it makes one so feel happy to live in such a beautiful, and diverse, country and you can see some of the incredible photo’s they took on their walks below.
In total our participants raised $1845 to help EDSNZ continue providing support and resources for kiwi’s across the country with EDS. Thank you so much everyone for joining us!
EDSNZ Read-A-Thon 2024
We had 2 people sign up to take the challenge, and they were amazing – Books read includedLord of Eternal Night by Ben Alderson, King of Wrath by Ana Huang, Divergent by Veronica Roth, The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis and more! Our participants got to lose themselves in fantastic worlds all curled up in a nice cosy place while the weather raged on outside.
Thanks to the amazing fundraising efforts of everyone who participated who also raised an incredible $274!
Create Your Own Fundraiser
This year for the month of May we had two people working very hard using our Create Your Own Fundraiser website to do their own challenges to raise money for EDSNZ. Hugh had multiple adventures while Jasmine challenged herself to knit 31 items in 31 days, with the items being donated to a local charity who gives knitted clothes to community members in need for free. Thank you to both Hugh and Jasmine who worked extremely hard during May.
EDSNZ Virtual Quiz Night
On the night our participants got to show off their Kiwiana trivia by being the fastest to answer correctly and be in to win some great spot prizes courtesy of our sponsors. The quiz lasted about 40 minutes in total, and everyone who joined had a great time! Congratulations to our spot prize winners, who won a pack of Green Tea courtesy of sponsor Dilmah Tea and a $10 MTA Voucher, and the wining quiz team who won a handmade quilt donated by a member of our community. While entry was free, our participants generously donated $120 in koha.
Art Competition
Our Art Competition this year included everything zebra related!
We had 21 entries in the Under 16 category, and a further 3 in the Over 16 category. Congratulations to our two winners who won a Lego Creator 3-in-1 Set!
Sponsors
This year we were delighted to bring some fantastic sponsors on board who helped us out with supplying some wonderful prizes for our participants. Thanks to our sponsors for making this an incredible year to remember!
We had support from Getting Lost NZ with a copy of their Getting Lost Everyone Edition, 6 Packets of Green Tea from Dilmah Tea, MTA Vouchers courtesy of Mobile Gas Station in Featherston. We also had a couple of annonymous donations from members of the EDS community – 6 handmade quilts and 2 $50 Paper Plus Vouchers.
We had our prize giving early on the 6th of June and you can find a list of the winners, and their prizes, below.
Prize Giving
Congratulations to all our winners, we hope you had a fantastic time joining in our events, and that you enjoy your prizes.
This year we used Random Picker to generate our winners.
Distance Challenge Winners
Cathy $50 Paper Plus Voucher
Jean Handmade Quilt
Christina Getting Lost Game, Green Tea and $10 MTA Voucher
Read-A-Thon Winners
Ruby $50 Paper Plus Voucher
In total, through our communities’ various efforts to raise funds for EDSNZ we were donated the grand total of $4953! This was more than we ever expected to raise and quite frankly everyone at EDSNZ is grateful and in awe of how our community came together this May to support EDSNZ and help us with our various causes and discuss some interesting topics.
Again, we want to say a huge thank you to everyone for the support and for everyone’s efforts to raise awareness this month, we’re looking forward to next May already!