Rosemary & Paul Meyer, the Assistant Directors for BNI South East Auckland had a vision and a dream to hold a BNI South East Auckland Regional Fundraising event for Hospice South Auckland.
With the awesome support, assistance and tireless efforts of Phil Shaw from BNI Metro Chapter and Rob Warner from BNI Counties Chapter the vision and dream began to turn into reality.
After about 11 weeks of planning and meeting weekly for the last 6 weeks, Friday 29thOctober saw over 100 people gathered at the Papakura Soccer Club Rooms at McLennan Park (hire of venue was kindly donated) to support this fundraising venture. A Trivia Quiz and Auction was under way. Guests were greeted at the door by Lisa Meredith & Michelle Harrison from BNI High Flyers, Maureen Collins-Wright from BNI Manukau and Alyson Wilcock from BNI Travel Growth. Graham Southwell and his family attended along with past and present BNI members, their families & clients as well as representatives from Hospice South Auckland and the Papakura Soccer Club. It was an overwhelming feeling to experience the anticipation, fun, camaraderie and generosity of all the people in the room and also the donatees.
We received approximately $20,000 worth of auction items for the evening and a huge thank you goes firstly to Phil and Rob for their hard work in obtaining some fantastic items including a house lot of ceiling insulation from Tasman Insulation, Car Racing Experience Hampton Downs, courtesy of Turnkey Motorsport and a holiday package to Cairns courtesy of Pacific Blue and House of Travel. To everyone else who gave so generously of their products and services, we are truly grateful. We are extremely pleased to be presenting a cheque to Hospice South Auckland for $10,300.00 next week.
Paul Meyer MC for the evening did a splendid job. Rob Warner Quiz Master kept everyone on their toes and to time with his thought provoking questions. Judges Phil Shaw, Rosemary Meyer & Jon Brewerton were out on the floor willing to be bribed for answers, in the form of cash donations. After the first three rounds of questions a scrumptious supper, kindly sponsored by BNI NZ was served by Oilans Café members of BNI Counties Chapter. Jo Pavletich and Andrew from Acoustic Candy entertained with live music and song. Then it was Live Auction Time.
Ted Ingram from Ray White Realty, Papakura was the Auctioneer who had the task of getting the best offer on items up for auction. Jamie Morrison from BNI Metro, Jon Brewerton, Ashley Ball and Maria McHugh from BNI East Auckland and Tim Wilcock were the spotters and Alyson Wilcock from BNI Travel Growth was busy with the eftpos machine, ( kindly donated by Sid Noble from Armitage), collecting the money.
Katrina Johns of Accent Photography http://www.accentphotography.co.nz and a member of BNI Howick Chapter kindly came and captured some moments of the night.
After the second bracket of questions the silent auction closed and Graham Southwell presented the successful bidders with their items. During this time Vijay Nyayapati from BNI Metro and Eric Neal from BNI Bright Stars who were the statisticians for the evening, were busy collating all the results. The winners of the trivia quiz were presented with gift baskets by Rosemary Meyer.
All in all a fantastic evening. A huge thank you to everyone involved.
