We are into the final two weeks before our foundation year expedition! Wow! We are ready…are you?
This week saw us finalising details with our lead sponsor – Distell. We really are enjoying working with these passionate people already! And we can’t wait to tell people about their brand new wine range – Place in the Sun! By the way – a huge thank you to Dirk from What’s Up Cape Town for all your coordination of this.
Our Quiksilver stock arrive this week and WOW! Dane at Quiksilver Durban – you have really outdone yourself. Our 2012 expedition team will be dressed and styling in the latest Quiksilver shirts, jackets, shorts, caps, sunglasses, stickers (for the car or maybe Maddy’s forehead) and some great backpacks to keep it all in. It really does feel like Christmas now!
We also collected our Fairtrade Label South Africa supplies – stickers, badges and t-shirts and we are just waiting for our ShowMe t-shirts and we will be all set with our 2012 clothing! Looking good team!
The ShowMe South Africa franchises and in particular ShowMe Cape Town are really starting to get stuck into The EXPEDITION Project now. They will be assisting us with our 2012 SMS campaign aimed at raising much-needed project development funds. We will be letting you know more about how the campaign will work very soon!
We mentioned before that Vituvent will be handling our online competitions and live content as well as some of our social media channels. We have some great ideas ahead for 2012 and can’t wait to share these with you…all in good time!
On Friday 16th December, our 2011 BEACH Festival kicked off in Buffalo Bay, Knysna. This is the third annual festival we have run and it’s going from strength to strength. It will now form part of our EVENTS Project (our events platform for The EXPEDITION Project) and the idea is to start and finish each annual expedition from The BEACH Festival. As we begin travelling around South Africa we will be identifying new locations to grow the BEACH Festival as well as showcasing other events and creating new ones. All in all, it will be a job creation platform and a much-needed revenue stream for The EXPEDITION Project. We plan on making The EXPEDITION Project a sustainable entity in itself, and this is one of the avenues that will be helping us do just that. These days it is becoming more common for NPOs and NGOs to create revenue streams to assist in funding and move away from sponsorship reliance. We feel this is crucial in formulating our long-term goals. In saying that, sponsors are still so important!
Saturday was spent trying to convince the Outdoor Warehouse staff in Cape Town to sort us out with some donated gear – tents, tek towels, torches and other camping kits. We have R1000 to spend in their great store to a generous donor but it would be even better if they could support us with another R1000 worth of kit! So many cool things in this store!
As we start packing vehicles, collecting final expedition items, filming pre-launch clips, and finalising 2012 food and accommodation arrangements, we thought over the next week, we should spend some time talking about our sponsors. The people and companies that are turning our dream into a reality. The people without, we would not be doing what we are doing, travelling in the direction we are travelling. From the start, we all agreed that with or without sponsors, The EXPEDITION Project would forge ahead in whatever capacity possible. And we are doing just that. However, thanks to the participation of certain individuals that can recognise our vision, our journey is made so much easier and is most definitely off to a fantastic start! So over the next week, we will be talking a bit more about these people. Their visions, their ideas and their participation in The EXPEDITION Project.
So to Distell, Place in the Sun, TomTom, Quiksilver, Jam Factory, Firestarter, Virtuvent, Fairtrade, ShowMe, What’s Up Cape Town, Open Africa, Autac Signs, Flexi-Covers, Bushwakka, Trees4Schools, Miko Coffee, all our food and accommodation sponsors – this next week is all about you!
6 months ago our small but highly motivated team come up with a vision. This vision was to reshape all of our lives and hopefully the lives of many others too and so far that is exactly what it has done. Since Roger, Renee, Warren, Graham, Maddy and the Jam Factory team started discussing the concept it has engrossed our thoughts and re-focused our energies. This is only the beginning…
P.S.: We are going to keep asking until we get through – we only have another 27 days left of our Crowdfunder campaign and we still need to raise 940 GBP.
If you would like to sponsor just 10 GBP – find out how here
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