Business Apprentice raises over £7,000 for PACT Charity

Ellie Sawyer, a Barnsley College apprentice, raised over £7,000 for the charity, PACT, the Parents Association of Children with Tumours and Leukaemia.

PACT co-ordinator, Beryl Welburn, on behalf of the PACT team said: “We would like to say a huge thank you to Ellie Sawyer at Blue Chip for her recent fundraising event for PACT.  She raised an incredible £7,131.71 which will go a long way in helping us to continue supporting the children and the families of children treated for cancer and leukaemia at the Sheffield Children’s Hospital.

“Working with Ellie has been an absolute pleasure and she has shown dedication and commitment to PACT throughout.  She got the team at Blue Chip behind her and together they made her Charity Auction Night a huge success.”

The Charity Auction Night, held on 16 March, was Ellie’s first solo fundraising event. The night had 2 comedians, performances, a raffle, and an auction. Ellie organised and ran the event, making it a huge success, and raising a total of £7,131.71.

Ellie, who works at Blue Chip PFP, said: “I chose to do a charity auction in honour of PACT, not only to push myself to my full potential, but to benefit such an amazing charity and help all those who need it most. I picked PACT because as a smaller cancer charity within the Sheffield Children’s Hospital, they do not receive the funds from the larger fundraising events.

“PACT’S funds are usually raised from individual people’s events like mine or any donations they receive. I never expected to raise them over £7,000 but I feel so proud that my success can help others on their journey.

“As PACT says, ‘put simply they do whatever they can to make the journey less painful’ and I feel privileged to be a part of that, by raising the money that both the charity and the families need to do this.”

Ellie is undertaking a Level 3 Business Administration apprenticeship with Barnsley College and she completed this project as a part of her course in order to show her project management skills, including planning, monitoring and reporting.

She added: “The project took eight long, hard, and emotional months of planning from start to finish, but it felt so rewarding to raise PACT over £7,000 and know that this money is going to help so many families in need, whose children are sadly being diagnosed with cancer.

“The instructions of my task for my course were to plan and manage a project from start to finish, the project had to be a minimum of 25 hours and a maximum of 35 hours, as you can imagine with the project being so large, so many hours of dedication went into this.

“The planning process was never going to be easy and included gathering auction and raffle prizes, selling, and making tickets, hiring a room and entertainment and so many more small details.”

Ellie has been included for a nomination consideration for the Barnsley Chronicles Young Champion Awards, under the categories ‘Young Apprentice’ and ‘Young Entrepreneur’.

The cheque presentation took place on Tuesday 2 April with PACT co-ordinator, Beryl Welburn, in attendance, at Blue Chip PFP.