On November 8th An Evening for Happy Child was hosted at the Oscar Church parish hall with 180 dear friends, engaged in Happy Child’s labor for the children at the orphanage in Muang Mai.
This year, 25 SEK was in focus and how much difference 25 SEK can do for the kids at the orphanage. As an example, for 25 SEK, the price of a Magnum ice cream, a child at the orphanage gets 6 dinners.
So in the spirit of the 25 SEK, people could buy a glass of wine for 25 SEK and or they could buy lottery tickets to win one of the great prizes for 25 SEK per ticket. During the evening, we sold all 500 tickets - in other words, just the tickets raised 3000 dinners! The sausages Lithells sponsored us with were served from an excellent hot dog cart that we had borrowed from Rentevent.
Happy Child's chairman, Lotta Noremark, welcomed everyone and then handed over to the amazing Helene Benno, who had taken time off from other duties to help us keep up the evening as the evening's emcee.
The orphanage had put together a video greeting for all the guests in honor of the evening, where Hans talked about the orphanage today and what the future holds. The two oldest children at the orphanage, Neng and Bonut, talked about themselves and their future plans. Plans for the future, they are able to have today, thanks to the support and commitment of others!
Kjell Bergqvist told about all his visits to the orphanage and how these have contributed to his commitment to the children there.
Nathalie Bergqvist, who has visited the orphanage several times with her father, provided the musical entertainment along with Julia Koponen, who has put together two concerts for the benefit of the children, and David Wagner, who has volunteered at the orphanage.
In addition to these three, authentic American folk music was performed by the amazing Hot Corn.
Yes, there was a lot of music - and for music to be heard, you need great equipment, equipment that Rickard Åhsted at Ljud och Bild Media let us use free of charge, thanks to Tommy Lundqvist for finding these guys. Many thanks to Hannes Hultkrantz also for providing the loudspeaker system!
To add some extra spice to the evening Fredrik Boltes had traveled up from Jönköping to make our guests intrigued with his illusions and tricks. Since he had recently been visiting the orphanage, he too could tell us a little about his experiences there.
The atmosphere was very warm and emotional. No one walked away untouched by the work of Happy Child, or by the children who live there. In other words, it was an incredibly successful evening.
We want to thank everyone who participated in an evening for Happy Child! It was you that made this evening possible.
We also want to say a huge thank you, to all the wonderful people and businesses that contributed raffle prizes;
In this year's lottery, you could win two trips to Phuket thanks to Fritidsresor, PA och Co offered a dinner for two, Point 65 offered kayaking for five people, Nescafe Dolco Gusto contributed a Dolce Gusto coffee machine, Kneisel a pair of skis, FAB Stockholm offered a free optional treatment, Peder Molin contributed three fine bottles of wine to be enjoyed by a lucky winner, Peder Molin and Team Winemaster also donated wine tasting for two people,
Scalateatern offered two tickets to the show Marilyn, Dansmuseet contributed some goodies that were raffled off in three different bags, Anne Andersen contributed four orphanage bracelets, a lucky winner got gift certificates for 1,000 SEK at Fredells – this donated by Nife Entreprenad, Elsa Noremark had crocheted a very nice iPhone case, Fanny Modig had baked 2 Kg of her finest cookies for one lucky winner, Someone won this year's Christmas concert with Euterpes Chamber Choir.
We were privileged to give away a fine woolen blanket, a linen tablecloth and traditional Christmas style table decorations donated by Ann-Charlotte Jåfs. We raffled off five book packages from Natur och Kultur and another three book packages from Max Ström, we also raffled off products, as well as a gift certificate for dyeing and hair styling, by Björn Axen, someone walked away with a lovely set of Faber Castell pencils and, last but not least, someone had the good fortune to win a day with stylist Maria Lindqvist and 1,000 SEK to shop for that Maria kindly offered.
