The CBYA was proud to donate the charity money collected from the members for the volunteers of our nominated charity, Make-a-Smile. We donated a total of 750€ to the cause: 500€ which was given in December to help with their Christmas Bag appeal, which goes towards giving the children a present to open on Christmas Day, and an additional 250€, which was given today.

Tony Grande from Make-a-Smile gave a really moving speech about how disadvantaged the children under their care are: the welfare system provides food, shelter and basic education, but nothing else – not even heating!

Without Make-a-Smile the children would not even have the basics for healthy living – optical glasses, hearing aids, special needs attention, let alone pyjamas, haircuts, and sanitary products, and certainly not birthday nor Christmas presents. The charity struggles to fund these basics, and without donation such as ours, the children’s lives would be substantially worse.

The donations from members came exclusively from those that came to the club Social Events in 2023; mainly from raffles, but also from ticket sales at special charity events. We should be able to do better! We need to be more inclusive, and ask all the members to support our nominated charity. We are trying to put together a giving page on the website, and plan to introduce a giving option, which can be collected when members renew their subscription. Your comments on these ideas would be most welcome  – please contribute your views in the comments section below.

On a social note, the event was a sell out – we filled the La Bodeguilla restaurant, and those that attended were rewarded with a delicious meal with the usual very good service that the restaurant provides. We look forward to seeing many more at the next social event, which will be our Awards Presentation at the A Bordo restaurant on February 19th.