Charity dinner a huge success

Posted on March 31, 2025 by Angus Mccoll - feature stories

On behalf of the Rotary Club of Cairns Sunrise and the Friends of Himalayan Children Association we want to thank you for supporting our Fundraising dinner on Saturday night. We raised $15,700!

On 8 February we held a charity dinner to raise funds for FHC. It was a fabulous evening of Nepalese food, supplied by Gurka Restaurant in Cairns, speeches, raffle prizes and auctions. Our special guest for the night was Paul Hockey who gave a rousing presentation about his life and extraordinary achievements.
The Cairns community responded to our cause and we sold nearly 200 dinner tickets for the evening. And over $2,000 was raised from raffles alone, which is amazing. Som and Susan raised nearly $7,000 by auctioning a hiking holiday with their ‘Take on Nepal.’

Som and Susan also donated beautiful items from their shop ‘Himalayan Dreams’. Thank you to Down Under Dive who donated a reef trip and the Yorkeys Knob Golf Club. And to Julie Stasinowsky for offering two stunning, water-coloured, framed prints and cards. Other donors include ‘Bad Fishy’ jet boats, AJ Hackett Skypark, Paronella Park and Mamu Tropical Skywalk.

We explained to the guests on the night that, as well as raising funds to advance our facilities in Batase, we were looking for sponsors for 16 children our team in Nepal have identified as at risk of missing out on an education because of life difficulties. They rallied! Amazingly, nine of the kids found sponsors on the night (more on page 3). We are so thankful to all who came forward for them. You are making a difference to young lives across the other side of the world.

If you couldn’t make it to the dinner and would like to help out, please contact our sponsorship co-ordinator – Peter Gaudron (donations@f-hc.org, or T: 0417 882 717) and he will assist you. This is life-changing for these children.

Or if you would like to donate and claim tax deductibility, please visit https://directory.rawcs.com.au/28-2023-24 and this will take you directly to our RAWCS donation page. You can even just set up a small $20-a-month regular contribution to our RAWCS project and help us achieve our goals sooner of building better facilities in Batase. Every little bit will help.

Your email details from the charity night will be added to the FHC’s newsletter database so we can thank you with this latest edition of the newsletter.
The newsletter informs our friends of the latest news from our team’s efforts in Nepal and from FHC headquarters here in Cairns. And we promote fund-raising activities and functions we have coming up in the future. Should you not wish for your email to remain included on our newsletter database, please let me know
(angus.mccoll@f-hc.org).

Thank you for your generous support.