Students from the John F Kennedy Catholic School showed off their entrepreneurial skills for a ‘Dragon’s Den’ style project to fundraise for the homelessness charity, given the task to take a seed fund of £100 and challenging them to maximise their fundraising potential for a £3,500 grand total target.
The group gave a presentation to managers from The Marlowes Shopping Centre, explaining the initiative and detailing why they needed the assistance of the centre to reach their target.
After receiving the go-ahead, the team decided to set up a series of stalls within the mall on the day of the highly anticipated Halloween ‘Meet the Animals’ event, and sold homemade cakes and ran family friendly games for visitors to enjoy. Students also took charity buckets around the centre and saw fantastic generosity from the event attendees, with their efforts resulting in a record-breaking donation total of £270 for the charity.
The success of this event has inspired The Marlowes and JFK students to continue this charitable momentum, with plans to set up a DENS Community Christmas Tree at Guest Services this Christmas.
Charlotte McCarthy, Community Fundraiser at DENS commented “A huge thank you to The Marlowes for having our Dragon’s Apprentice students hold a stall at the Meet the Animals event. It was the busiest I’ve seen The Marlowes and our group raised a record £270 for DENS. It’s really inspired them to do more activities like this and also start planning for the DENS community Christmas Tree soon!”
Humphrey Mwanza, Centre Manager at The Marlowes Shopping Centre, commented “It was a pleasure to host the Dragon’s Apprentice students from DENS for a day of fundraising, and we’d like to thank our shoppers and event attendees for their generosity in supporting this brilliant charity, one that we have been proud to support for many years. We look forward to continuing our partnership and to welcome the team back very soon.”
For further details on events at The Marlowes Shopping Centre, visit The Marlowes website.