We dreamed it, and then we did it! Our Equinox Outdoor Kindergarten fundraising effort, Where the Concrete Ends, ended in the wee hours last night, and we have raised a whopping $25,051 in 40 days. I am amazed to just type that sentence out. I knew when we arrived that Equinox that it was a special place, but wow. WOW.
Watching this campaign unfold has been a thrilling ride and ended with a bang: for those of you who weren’t compulsively clicking the refresh button on the Indiegogo page, approximately $4,000 was raised in our last 24 hours! We cannot thank you enough – so many of you – who contributed in effort, time, funds, and goodwill.
We also wanted you to know that we raised $2,200 from our pub night at Scallywags – thank you to everyone who came out and made it such a fun time. Special thanks to Scallywag’s owners/parents who donated all the proceeds of the night and to Dirty Dishes, whose live music performance clinched the night.
We also raised $1,000 from our picnics after school. We hope you enjoyed the treats, the arts and crafts, the brain gym, and the company.
Together with funds from Parent Council, it’s a significant stash! It’s enabling us to begin to transform the school space and to secure grants from external sources, a process which will begin this summer. And just this morning, our designer and TDSB representatives came to Equinox to re-envision our kindergarten space, a requisite first step that wouldn’t have been possible without the funds we raised.
I just tried to write a list of thank yous for this campaign, but deleted it because it’s far too long. But there have been about 20 key contributors who went so far beyond reasonable expectation in giving of their time, talent, and resources, the ones who squeezed a lot of minutes and hours out of days already teeming with children and work outside and inside the home. Without them, there would have been no campaign.
And without the broader support of the community, there would have been no successful campaign. For this, we thank our friends within and outside the school walls for such a tremendous show of support and generosity. We needed you, and you were there.