Fundraising for a Sustainable Ocean Planet

updates

14 December, 2011

BBQs and Auctions for a Sustainable Ocean Planet!

On sunday December 4th 2011, our GoPro Interns and the Blue Season Bali team gathered together for our monthly IE Party at our Sanur dive centre. Each month we host this casual event in part sponsored by Storm Beer to celebrate and reward the hard work of our IDC candidates and Divemaster interns. Over the past few months, we’ve opted to combined our BBQs with creative auctions to raise money for Project AWARE, supporting their various Actions. For our last event of 2011, we wanted to push the envelope and do something fun and out-of-the-box! Someone on the team suggested that we do a “slave” auction... From this idea, we recruited 5 willing PADI professional instructors to trade their specific skills and time to save the Sharks in Peril!

The Great Subservient Success

Hoping that we would “beat” our previous fundraiser which raised $280.00, we set our target to $500.00 thinking that we would easily fetch $100 each. Little did we know! It seems that Blue Season’s interns are passionate about saving the sharks and supporting the Project AWARE Foundation. In turn each subservient went on stage, offering their services. Each offering a very unique set of skills: Thomas McKenzie offering to pretty much be your personal Assistant, Neil Chamberlain opted to share his vast knowledge of Marine Engineering and coastal erosion, Thomas Bazz Barrett put a full Intro to Tec course on the table for the winner, Jonathan Cross offered nothing less than a full day of sport conversation, food and drinks on him, and I (Robert Scales) offered the winning bidder(s) a day workshop on digital media, web marketing and website development. To our surprise, Tom West made a late entry to the auction and offered to do “whatever” the winner would request of him. In total our 6 subservient raised an incredible 37.000.000Rp ($4000.00) which pretty much stunned everyone on the team. [caption id="attachment_235" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="BSB raised $4000.00 for Project AWARE!"][/caption]

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has. Margaret Mead

After speaking with Project AWARE we are happy to announce that our $4000.00 donation will be matched by PADI as part of their "December Matching Contributions Program” which mean that we are adding a grand total of $8000.00 to assist in funding various Actions and efforts to keep our Ocean Planet sustainable. On Behalf of the entire Blue Season Team we would like to thank PADI for their generosity and support.

So what’s next for 2012?

For starter you can definitely expect more BBQ, auctions, contests, fundraiser, and active participation in local Project AWARE actions from the Blue Season team, our clients and interns.