Our Spring Charity Celebration a Success!

Last Saturday, Little Flower--with the help of some amazing people around the Beijing community, local and international sponsors, volunteers, and our staff--held its Spring Charity Celebration, with food, good company, and an auction and raffle featuring some pretty amazing prizes. It was a great way to work with the community, introduce Little Flower to new friends, give out fun prizes, and raise money in the process.

The masterminds behind the event were Jim Zimmerman, a great friend to Little Flower, and founder Brent Johnson. Jim did an amazing job of spearheading the effort to secure some extremely enticing auction and raffle items, including round trip tickets from Beijing to Hawaii, paradise vacations in Mexico, the Phillippines, and Mauritius, and autographed vintage movie posters.

When it came time for the event to come together, even more people pitched in. Little Flower staff helped to set up and work during the evening. Of course, in between all that work, there was also some time for group pictures.

Little Flower Group Homes Manager Ruth and our Curriculum Director Maria were our information table representatives, there to answer any questions that people might have about what we do.

Here was the raffle table. Everyone was excited to try their luck. With the grand prize being a pair of roundtrip tickets on Hawaiian Airlines from Beijing to Honolulu and a stay at the Outrigger Waikiki...you can understand why!

We also had a bunch of silent auction items, including holidays in China and abroad, fine wines and cigars, autographed books by famous authors, antiques, and memorabilia. A huge thank you goes out to everyone who helped find these items, and the wonderful people who donated them. 

A free flow of wine, drinks, and snacks were served throughout the party.

And some of our older children from the Little Flower group homes gave short presentations about their experiences and time at Little Flower. Afterwards, they got to draw the raffle tickets and announce the lucky winners.

It was a great success, with about 140,000 raised. Though this is only a small fraction of our monthly budget, every bit counts, and 100% of all the money raised will go directly towards childcare. Thanks again to everyone who pitched in to run this great community event!