Calendar appeal touches the hearts of the public
PEGSWOOD fundraisers are waiting with bated breath to see their first calendar in print.
Parents Margaret and Andrew Kerswell set up the Jayne Esther ECMO Fund in memory of their daughter, who died in January 2008 at just 11 days old after a number of complications.
The fund aims to buy a 100,000 Extra Corporeal Membrane Oxygenation (ECMO) machine for local hospitals, train staff in the specialist skills needed to operate it and meet the 6,000 daily running costs.
Earlier this year the News Post Leader reported that the fund was planning to produce a 'J is for Joy' 2011 calendar to boost its coffers, with an appeal to the public to provide artwork, stories, poems and photographs to fill it.
Now the final entries have been decided by a panel of supporters and the calendar is expected to go to the printers next week.
Mrs Kerswell said: "I have seen the design, but I can't wait to see it in print – I'm quite excited.
"There is a little boy in Pegswood who did a piece for it and he is really looking forward to it. He told his Mam he is going to be famous.
"We have had a really good response and took about 20 or 30 pre-orders at our launch night. Since then we have had lots of people asking us to make sure they are down for one and we have had quite a few orders.
"One woman who had already ordered phoned up and asked to book another ten."
Dozens of entries were received for the calendar, including about 30 pieces each from Bebside and Bothal middle schools.
And Mrs Kerswell was impressed with the high standard.
"We had a very hard job picking the ones to go in the calendar," she said.
"For the schools' entries we decided to make them postcard size so we could have four from each school in a month, but even getting them down to four was really difficult.
"We had such fantastic entries from different people and organisations and the toddler group that Jayne would have gone to made handprints to use as a border around the poems for the January entry.
"Considering this was the first time we have done it and there could have been misunderstanding about what we wanted from people, I think we have had a really good response.
"All of the entries are a good standard and I'm really pleased with them."
The chosen entries include photographs by Keith Cochrane and David Whitaker of Cambois Camera Club, Stephen Tunesi and Keith Weatherly, artwork by Graham Robert Armstrong, Joan Cowx, Aidan Chivers, Linda Gibson and the children of Ward 23 at the Freeman Hospital, and poems by Joyce Ramsay, Jo-Anna Gray and Nicholas Gordon.
The fund initially considered ordering 2,000 calendars, but with hopes of support from Northumberland County Council, schools, hospitals and businesses in providing opportunities to sell them, the group is now considering ordering 3,000.
"I would hate to have no calendars left and people asking for them because we don't want people to think we are unreliable," said Mrs Kerswell.
"It is very difficult to decide what we need in the first year. We can take pre-orders, but you can't judge everything that way."
Supporters hope that the calendar will become an annual fundraiser, helping the appeal to secure charity registration.
"We are going through charity registration now and getting all the documentation because a lot of places won't consider you until you have that, but to get that we have to be able to generate 5,000 a year," said Mrs Kerswell.
"Selling this calendar would be a way of doing that. We could make one every year with different themes.
"There are people who buy these kind of calendars and become loyal to a particular charity and get one every year. We are hoping that sort of thing will happen for us.
"We seem to be having a pretty good reception so far. Hopefully that will carry on and if we get the charity registration through we can go from strength to strength."
The calendar is expected to be available in October, priced 4.99.
Further information can be found at the Jayne Esther ECMO Fund fan site on Facebook.
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Weather for Blyth
Thursday 17 May 2012
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