SOS AFRICA CHILDREN's CHARITY

SOS Africa Charity News >

Swansea Civic Centre Abseil Raises £9,500 for African Charities

10 Feb 2015

From “The Pigs in Blankets” to “The Rockin Robins,” throughout an extra festive weekend last December, teams from councils, universities, schools and businesses flocked to Swansea’s Civic Centre to abseil for Africa! During the two day event, teams of six, dressed in festive costumes, ranging from full Christmas roast dinners (sprouts included) to giant parking tickets abseiled from the 120ft council building (the height of 52 sheep) to raise invaluable funds for two worthy African education charities.

The building itself was chosen for its scenic location on the Swansea Sea Front and certainly did not disappoint; all 113 bold participants were blessed with fantastic weather and a beautiful view across the bay. Many of our teams were also boosted by the fantastic encouragement and support provided by the crowds which gathered; some to support their friends and others following up on recently reported Santa and reindeer sightings.

In the months leading up the event, many of the fundraising teams had been involved in a hotly contested competition to win two tickets to Africa to visit one of the charities education projects. With all eyes on the fundraising table, when the deadline was finally reached in early January, we were delighted to declare Andrea’s Angels the winners after raising a fantastic £1060: (https://www.justgiving.com/teams/SwanseaCivicCentreAbseil).

Now that all of the event sponsorship has been collected in, we are pleased to announce that the event has raised an incredible £9,500 for the two African charities. SOS Africa and Swansea Siavonga will use the funds raised to educate underprivileged children in Zambia and South Africa, to help them break the poverty cycle. “Working with SOS Africa was an absolute delight. It was an exciting and challenging event to help organise and enabled us raise invaluable funds for our common cause - educating children in Africa. Everyone had great fun, even those who found it really scary. We are looking forward to doing it again in 2016! Thank you to everyone who helped put the event together, took part in it and all the people who donated funds to make it such a success!” (Christine Watson MBE, Swansea Siavonga)

Looking back on the action packed weekend, surely one of the most inspirational moments had to be witnessing courageous 4 year old Tamzin tandem abseil with her dad John. Congratulations to Tamzin, John and all of our triumphant abseilers for completing our challenge and raising much needed funds for our causes! A big thank you also to Swansea Council for allowing us to use the Civic Centre and to CheddarClimbingCaving for supervising the abseiling.

Watch this space for our next South Wales abseil challenge in 2016…