And ... It's a Wrap!

Yesterday, (Tuesday), at precisely 12.01, we put down our phones (at last!) and breathed a huge sigh of relief! The Big Give Christmas Campaign officially ended at midday and we now have a final GRAND total of £46,359.77, which includes the additional matchfunding and Gift Aid. An incredible result and far more than we expected.

There really aren't enough superlatives to describe adequately both the grand total and the extent of our gratitude ... but 'phenomenal, mind-blowing, immense, amazing and fantastic' will do to start with.

We confess to being a bit apprehensive about the 'unexciting' topic of furniture and 'stuff' to equip the new lab and library together with more computers and better 'systems' of solar & network much needed by WTA. All rather one-dimensional. This had less of a 'story' than children's mobile libraries and extolling the joy of reading from last year! Unwittingly, we had also created a silly tonguetwister in the title and hashtag of 'Tables, Texts & Tech', which gave us an idea to play with. So, the great energy, humour and fun added by students and teachers undoubtedly took the campaign message onto another level. We must also give credit to the superb creativity and seasonal input from our longsuffering trustees and other friends, not to mention a spot of dressing up going on here in Uganda! Plus, if you also shared, reposted or forwarded any of our posts and emails, our huge thanks to you too.

Some numbers to digest .. It's definitely worth repeating the final, grand total of £46,359.77 with 77 different donations from 10 different countries over 7 days - and of course huge thanks to the organisations & individuals that generously match funded.

Donations started just after midday on Tuesday 3rd and they were still flying in at 2 minutes to midday on Tuesday 10th. Interestingly, there was a very steady stream of donations throughout the week, without the peaks and stressful troughs of previous years.

Most of the little Instagram and Whatsapp clips were watched 100s of times, with a couple of them being watched over 1,000 or even 3,000 times, thanks to so many of you reposting and the shared ownership on some posts.

Phone screentime reached an embarrassing average of 8hrs 36 mins per day, up 173%, which is a bit GenZ-ish, but let's blame that on the (slow) creative process and the slow download/upload speed in Uganda. In fact it was so slow, that we often took our laptops and phones back up to school very late at night, where the internet is so much better. Another reason to be grateful for techy donations!

So, a huge, superlative thank you to all of you for taking part in all the many different ways that you have supported the ServeDirect Big Give Christmas Campaign. We are immensely grateful to so many of you for your great generosity and thoughtfulness. Thank you too for your patience with the barrage of communication and relentless reminders, both on social media and via email. We will quieten down (a bit!) now and normal service will be resumed. We also need to catch up on sleep zzz. But before that we must dash - off to start writing all the thankyou cards ...

PS Thank you again! xx