I have been working over the last few weeks with my fellow 100minds participant and good friend Nichole de Leeuw to put together a 'Race Day Package' in aid of Temple Street. The package, in partnership with Leopardstown Race Course, includes Race Day entry on the 26th at Leopardstown, entry to our reception and raffle beforehand at my house, a party bus to Leopardstown and most importantly, a donation to Temple Street. It is priced at €30 and sold through the online payments platform 'Tilt.' Some of the companies who have come on board for the event include Paddy Power, Ingot, Keogh's Crisps, VitHit, Soundhire, Caterhire, SuperValu, Make Up Forever, Yankee Canlde, Deliveroo and Tropical Popical. Raffle prizes on the day include; 2 x €100 betting vouchers from Paddy Power, 4 x tickets to the enclosure area of the Leopardstown Christmas Festival for the 27th, 5 x €50 Deliver vouchers, Tropical Popical voucher, 2 x Inglot make up lessons, Make Up Forever one on one make up lesson worth €95 and Yankee Candle Spring 2017 sets. This event has no overheads.

My second project for 100minds this year is a Christmas Tree Collection in aid of Temple Street Children's Hospital around Blackrock, Monkstown and Stillorgan. I did this kind of project last year and was really happy with the result. Myself and my dad managed to collect over 60 trees, raising over €1k for Childline.

A project like this can be a logistical nightmare, so to eliminate any cash handling and make the project as transparent as possible, I'm placing a much greater emphasis on online donations this year. The leaflets have a QR code so one can donate directly to Temple Street beforehand then simply leave their tree out the front for collection on Sunday January 8th. The donors from last year have been contacted.

Time constraints this year mean we've had to scale back the tree collection and make it as efficient as possible. Unlike last year, when we could afford to do the collection for 7 nights in a row, it will only be for one day this year. As I am abroad for the days leading up to the collection and working full time when I return we could only distribute 300 leaflets compared to 1,000 last year. I have rented a van for the day to make the collection as efficient as possible.