What an amazing day we had on Friday raising money for Children In Need. Myself and Huntley Thawe from Hands On Entertainment (Pudsey Bear) set ourselves a target of raising £1000 in one day for Children In Need, it was quite an ambitious target but we were both confident it could be achieved.
I arrived at Huntleys house at 6.15am, our first stop was the BNI Black Pear business breakfast meeting at Bromsgrove Rugby Club. The first job was to get Huntley into his Pudsey outfit, this was a challenge in itself (he put it on backwards first time round). I didn't think the costume looked anything like Pudsey Bear (totally the wrong colour), but it didn't really matter, I just had to tell a few people it was Pudseys Cousin.
It was a great start to the day, lots of members of BNI Black Pear donated money and the membership commitee also handed over a cheque for £50!!
We left the breakfast meeting at 9am and set off on our mission around Bromsgrove. Huntley and I were both overwhelmed with how generous the people of Bromsgrove are (people were stopping in their cars and handing money over!)
I would like to say a big special thanks to thebestof bromsgrove businesses who donated! A really big thanks to Matt at Imagination Street Softplay for his very kind donation (It was so funny to see all the kids jumping on poor Huntley), Thank you Simon at Willowbrook Garden Centre and Johir from The Mint Lounge for your donations too. We also had amazing support from Wildmoor Oak Pub and Restaurant, they raised over £130 and fed us at lunch time, although I did find it a bit strange seeing Pudseys Cousin drinking a pint of beer!
Loads of businesses let us wonder around their premises to collect, Basepoint Business Centre, United Business Centres and Bromsgrove District Housing Trust to name just a few.
In the evening we went round Bromsgrove pubs and restaurants, everyone was really friendly and were happy to donate!
We finally arrived back at Huntleys house at 11pm to count the money and have a well deserved curry. We were absolutely delighted when we realised that we had reached our target, the total amount we raised was £1124.66.
Going into Barclay bank on the Saturday morning and handing all the money over was a moment I will never forget.
Thanks to everyone for there support and a big thanks to Huntley from Hands On Entertainment to dressing up as Pudseys Cousin.