Laura’s Coffee Morning and Baby Shower
Thank you to Laura and her family for hosting a coffee morning and baby shower and raising a fabulous £1,603.80 for CLAPA. We chatted to Laura about her journey and what inspired her to fundraise.
“I am currently 34 weeks pregnant with our second child, and at our 20-week scan, we found out that our baby had a unilateral cleft lip, gum notch, and cleft palate.
I didn’t fully understand what that meant until I spoke to our hospital’s brilliant, cleft nurses. They directed us to CLAPA, and we were so touched by the stories, the fundraising, and all of the things CLAPA does to support not only those with clefts but their families, too.
We felt compelled to contribute as we knew CLAPA would be such a big part of our baby’s life.
On our coffee morning, we had a bake sale, raffle, tombola, luxury Tombola, book sale, name a bear, mini hook a duck, and some football bingo cards.
The more friends and family we spoke to about our baby and their diagnosis, the more people volunteered to help us, too!
I love to organise, and the more people I spoke to about CLAPA and Cleft lip/palate, the more people wanted to help or donate. I used social media to promote our event a lot.
People were incredibly generous, from family & friends to local businesses. We had great support, which made the process so much easier.
I also contacted CLAPA via email if I had any questions, which was helpful too. Andrew (my husband) is really creative, and he made up some signs and flyers for the event, which looked very eye-catching.
There was a lot of turnout on the day; I’m sure it was all down to him. On the day, it was a charming experience. People wanted to chat with me, and I met other families connected to CLAPA or cleft lip/palates, which was a special part of the day.
Fundraising is a really rewarding thing to do. If you can rally your loved ones, I would make it an experience for you all.
I was overwhelmed by how many people we knew who wanted to contribute. We weren’t sure how much money we could raise. Once we began speaking about the event and our personal experience with the NHS cleft team and all the things CLAPA does, people felt happy to help us either by donating/volunteering the day, attending, or buying raffle tickets.
We ended up far surpassing any target we had in our minds! We’re absolutely over the moon to support CLAPA, and it’s an experience I won’t forget. I’m so proud of what we all achieved that day.”
