Calendar Girls bestow their gifts on Plett volunteers
Our front page on November 14 last year was adorned with a photo of Plett’s Men in Red holding aloft Bitou mayor Memory Booysen, and inside told how the festive season sale of a risqué calendar featuring 12 scantily-clad local lasses would raise funds for local volunteers (click on the Entertainment page of issue 352) – read on for the happy ending to their tale
March 7 was an exciting day for Plett’s Calendar Girls, as they finally handed over the fruits of their fundraising efforts to NSRI Station 14 and the Cansacare team.
During a merry sundowner function at the hi-tech rescue base on Central Beach, Sally Garmany, aka ‘Miss June’, ably assisted by Bitou mayor Memory Booysen presented station commander Deon Truter and his crew with three pieces of valuable equipment.
A pulse oximeter and suction unit, used to remove water inhaled by drowning victims, were among the items procured from the calendar’s proceeds.
But by far the most exciting item donated was the handheld night-vision scope which will enable the town’s NSRI volunteers to detect people up to 300m away, both in the water and on land. This means that Plett now leads the field as the first NSRI station in South Africa to have one of these valuable scopes.
The Calendar Girls were obviously thrilled to assist Plett’s 32-strong NSRI team in saving more lives along our shores.
Another exciting outcome of their fundraising efforts was an extremely generous offer from RCA in Joburg, of two fully automated high-sided hospital beds for Plett’s Cansacare unit, thus availing funds for the Calendar Girls to purchase many other items of equipment for Cansacare’s good use.
RCA sales representative Justine Butler personally attended last Thursday’s handover to present Pat Henderson with the state-of-the-art beds.
Just over R150’000 was raised by the Calendar Girls, of which R42’000 covered the costs of producing the tastefully naughty desktop calendar.
The idea of raising funds for these two worthy causes came from Sally, who was inspired by the 2003 UK film entitled Calendar Girls, to initiate a fun creative way of acknowledging the town’s gratitude to volunteers who freely give of their time to these essential services.
“The Plett community really dug deep and supported the initiative 100%, and mayor Memory Booysen endorsed it from the very start,” said Sally after the handover. “His enthusiasm was infectious, giving the girls the energy required to both create and market the calendar.”
Congratulating all involved on a job well done, ‘Miss June’ then concluded the ceremony with a challenge: “Now it’s high time the wives of our NSRI boys get started on creating the 2014 calendar!”
Source: CXpress