Donations instead of presents
I’m Felix. In the four weeks before Christmas I am carrying out my campaign “Felix runs for Mary’s Meals” to raise money for starving children. Read more about me and my story here. My aim was to provide 500 children with a good warm school meal for a whole year by Christmas. After just a few days we exceeded this target multiple times. Thanks to all of you! We are humbled and in awe for this incredible support and would love to thank each and everyone – but that’s beyond our technical and physical capabilities. I’m using a voice command tool to write messages and Emails where I dictate every word and every click. Maybe you can imagine how long this can take. But I’m so incredibly happy about all your messages and support. And of course, I will keep on running. So please support us, tell your friends about it and let’s see how many children we can give this amazing Christmas present. Donate here: marysmeals.org/Felix
After my return home to Frankfurt after my fifteen-month rehab in Heidelberg, I decided to celebrate my 30th birthday with a big party and invite 120 friends, family and my closest therapists into our garden.
But there was a lot of excitement before the day arrived: my birthday is in May — in that year it was two days before Ascension Day. But although I didn’t ascend into heaven, I did happen to crash into the wall of our stairway with my stair lift…
Five firemen had to come and rescue me from my “cage” (the stair lift has a safety bar in front and behind me). My carer, Andrzej, was waiting upstairs with a substitute wheelchair to receive me from the hands of the firemen. I actually found the excitement really entertaining. The mishap left a gaping hole in our wall for a while, which was repaired sometime later. On Friday, 11th May, one day before my birthday, the stair lift was finally repaired at ca. 6 pm. Just in time!
The birthday itself was a great success and I enjoyed it from beginning to end. The last guests were still there, when I went upstairs with my (now fully functioning) stair lift. After this I lay wide awake for some time in my bed, really happy about the lovely day and my numerous dear friends.
Instead of presents I had requested donations for Mary’s Meals and, believe it or not, 3,700 € was raised! And this year too I decided to ask for donations for my birthday, but this time on Facebook. My goal was to raise 200 €. The result was an amazing 1,427 €!
By the way: If anyone is still looking for an idea for a Christmas present — Mary’s Meals has beautiful gift cards, which you can order in return for a donation. (We recommend 18,30 €, which equates to 1 child for 1 year). When you are invited somewhere, these cards are really useful as a present for the host, instead of taking flowers or a bottle of wine.
Check them out in the shop: https://www.marysmeals.org.uk/gift-card-shop
And if you happen to go shopping on Amazon: please remember that via Amazon Smile you can choose Mary’s Meals as the benefitting organisation: then a small percentage will go to the children in our project countries.
Mary’s Meals — a simple solution to world hunger
Together we can change things! Please tell as many people as possible about Mary’s Meals and if you would like to support my campaign with a donation: https://www.marysmeals.org/felix
Mary’s Meals is an international children’s charity that currently provides over 1.6 million children in 19 of the poorest countries of the world with a daily life-changing school meal. 18,30 € is enough to feed one child for a whole year.
