The National Trust Monument Restoration Fund and St Margaret’s Hospice are to benefit jointly from a new raffle launched on Friday 23 August.
The Monumental Sunflower Raffle is the brainchild of Wellington’s John McCarten. His fundraising projects for the Monument have already involved producing Christmas cards and posters featuring the Blackdown Hills and the Monument painted on his ‘man cave’ by local artist Rosey Caley. One card sent to the Queen was acknowledged with HRH’s best wishes for the project.
John has assembled an extraordinary list of raffle prizes for the Monumental Sunflower Raffle simply through making personal contact with a range of businesses, organisations and individuals, all of whom have made donations. At the top of the list is a helicopter flight for two people from Dunkeswell.
The sunflower image – St Margaret’s Hospice logo – has been chosen for the raffle. At the launch John provided Emma Jones, Community Fundraiser and Engagaement Officer for the National Trust and Sadie Ellison, St Margaret’s Hospice Corporate Fundraiser, with hand-crocheted sunflowers to display on Copenhagen, the wooden horse in John’s garden named after the Duke of Wellington’s horse at the Battle of Waterloo.
Raffle tickets are just £1 and will be on sale at Odette’s Tea Room, Moonbeams Farm Shop, The Cottage Inn in Swains Lane and Nurtured by Nature in South Street, Wellington. The draw will take place on Monday 20 January 2020.
Of John McCarten’s fundraising efforts, Emma Jones said, “John is my hero. He’s simply wonderful!”
John’s garden is a credit to him. I’ve noticed this piece of land being transformed over the last few years. True community spirit!