AEGEE-Utrecht has many committees that are in charge of different events and actions. One of these committees, the charity committee (GoCie), organised an auction on the 26th of November to collect money for their charity of the year to help children in Romania. The AEGEEan found out more about these two events by speaking to Mireille Voorendt, member of the Charity Commission and Sien Rongen, board member of AEGEE-Utrecht.
One AEGEE-Utrecht’s committees is the charity committee, called GoCie (an abbreviation for “Goede Doelen Commissie” which translates to “charity commission”). This commission is rather new and consists of seven members who decided to pick one charity organisation to support every year. The organisation has to located in Europe and should be rather small and run by volunteers. The charity of this year was the “Stichting Roemeense Kinderhulp” (“Romanian Children Help”), a Dutch charity that has a children’s home in Romania, where 21 children get a chance for a future. “SRKH provides a home for these children”, Mireille tells us. “These children are not orphans, but either abandoned or neglected children. Here, the children are raised like in a normal family, with Romanian parents, who are selected carefully.”
The GoCie has grown very close with SRKH and they are in contact quite often. The chairman and his wife even came to AEGEE-Utrecht’s weekly social drink once. “They blew the audience away with their stories”, Mireille says excitedly.
It is therefore no wonder that the commission tries to raise as much money as possible for these nice people and their great organisation. Throughout the year, they have many activities on their agenda to collect money, such as a sponsored run, a charity concert or selling food on their weekly “borrel”. By November, they came up with another great idea: an auction!
Members of AEGEE-Utrecht could participate in two ways – either by bidding during the auction, or by offering something that the others would bid on. Firstly, a mail was sent to the members of AEGEE-Utrecht concerning the question of who would like to offer anything, in this case not anything material, but a “service” (“not like that, you dirty AEGEE minds”, Mireille jokes). The offered services ranged from making a dinner over a singing or guitar lesson to even teaching someone how to juggle.
On the evening of the 26th of November 2014, as on every Wednesday, members of AEGEE-Utrecht gathered for their “borrel” (social drink) on a boat to socialise. It was open to everyone and around 50 people participated. 20 of them had some auction items to offer while the other 30 were bidders.
As in a regular auction, the auction leader firstly introduced the offers and showed them on powerpoint slides. Then, the members who provided the services got the chance to come forward and explain some more details. In the end, the bidders could raise their hands and all the offers were sold. The outcome, 316 euros, and the fact that everyone present had so much fun that almost all the people on the boat took part in the bidding shows what a great idea the whole event was!
Sien, board member of AEGEE-Utrecht, concludes: “We as a board are very lucky with such active and enthusiastic members. If they did not have the time and the passion to do it, we as a local could not fulfill all those activities.”
Written by Katja Sontag, AEGEE-Aachen