Aagje (14) from Eindhoven has raised more than €1,000 for research into metabolic diseases. She did this by sleeping in a tent in the backyard with her puppy for ten nights.
She did the collection for ‘Serious Request’*, a returning Dutch radio campaign that this year is committed to research into metabolic diseases. Aagje living in Schrijversbuurt (authors’ neighbourhood) herself knows a boy with such a condition. “A boy in my class has a brother with such a disease. I don’t know exactly how it is, but it’s not entirely… good. That boy gets tired quickly and such”.
At her school, all second-year classes participated in the campaign. Most students sold chocolate milk to earn money, but Aagje came up with something else. She created a page on Serious Request website and asked people to sponsor it. After a few days, she had already raised €200 and to the surprise of her classmates, the target amount of €1,000 has also been reached.
Her mother Katrien had to get used to the idea at first. “She has slept in the garden more often. But always with me or her brother. This time she wanted to go alone… and then in the middle of December…” She is now super proud of her daughter, who has probably raised more money than all the chocolate milk sellers put together.
Watchdog
How did she brave the cold? “I just put on thick pyjamas and grabbed lots of blankets”, Aagje explains. She didn’t find it scary, even though it was pitch dark. That was because of the presence of her puppy. “I had Illy with me, my fellow campaigner. A good watchdog. Without him I might have been scared”.
Serious Request campaign runs until today, Tuesday 24 December, after which donations can still be made. In total, more than €6,000,000 have already been raised for research into metabolic diseases.
Here you can find the activity from Aagje.
Source: Studio040
Translated by: Bob
Ed.- Serious Request is a family of annual multi-day, multimedia fundraising events for International Red Cross initiatives, typically hosted by radio stations in the week before Christmas. The project was begun in 2004 by Dutch public pop music radio station 3FM. Serious Request projects have since been adopted in Belgium, Switzerland, Sweden, Kenya, South Korea, Austria, Latvia and Portugal.
