Archive for the ‘2013 Dinner’ Category

Two cities, $67,000!

Thursday, December 5th, 2013

 

OMG! What an amazing effort this year to be able to raise $67,000 through two fantastic events.

Firstly, we want to say a big thank you to all of our beautiful diners who came out and supported the events in both cities. And a huge thank you to all of our corporate sponsors, restaurants and major sponsors who truly made these events incredible for everyone involved.

Click here to see the corporate sponsors who generously supported our 2013 event.

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If you didn’t already know, we launched our first Dine for Life dinner in Melbourne! Yes, the culinary capital dined for life in seven of its top restaurants to much applause from all the diners. Natasha and myself dined at the new Calombaris venture Press Club – Projects and were treated to not only some incredible flavours but an impromptu fire alarm subsequently followed by the arrival of Victorian fire fighters clearly enjoying their moment in the limelight. There was such a great energy there and later at the after party we got to hear other guests sharing their fantastic experiences. For our first event in a pretty tough city, we certainly made a mark and 2014 is seeing a return.

Click here for the Melbourne restaurants and sponsors involved.

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Perth saw it’s fifth and biggest event yet with 20 of our most delicious restaurants putting on a fantastic fare for diners. The Trustee was the scene of the buzzing after party where almost every diner came and partied on until the bar tenders yelled ‘last rounds’.

Click here to see the restaurants and sponsors of the Perth event.

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We are truly lucky to be able to hold events that unite communities over what we all enjoy so much – great food and wine in a shared table setting and help raise much needed funding and awareness for people so much less fortunate than ourselves.

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This year we joined forces with Sydney based not for profit Project Futures who also raise funding and awareness for human trafficking and support the charity we selected as our own benefactor for our dining event, the Somaly Mam Foundation.

Somaly Mam sent a message of gratitude to all the diners and sponsors who have contributed to the success of the event, the funds raised and the compassion that has been shown in supporting such an important cause.

 

The funds raised with this event will be reported on in the 2014 Project Futures annual report and we will come back to you with how your contribution has helped the girls in the Somaly Mam and AFESIP centres.

See all the photos from both cities on our Facebook page.

Sincere thank you once again for your time, compassion and support. See you all in 2014!

Andjelka & Natasha
xox

 

Buy a table and win!

Monday, November 11th, 2013

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We have selected our 2013 charity!

Wednesday, September 18th, 2013

 

It is the long history of humankind (and animal kind, too) those who learned to collaborate and improvise most effectively have prevailed. —Charles Darwin

 

What a week…or two, it’s been.

So, after the flurry of changes, meetings, research, conference calls and a few sleepless nights, we have selected a charity doing incredible work for women and children who have been subjected to the harrowing experiences of sex trafficking.

Every time we select a charity we extensively research around the cause and researching this particular topic is hard on the soul. Even just the thought of a child or young girl or woman being subjected to that reality is horrifying at best.

The bright side to this is that we get to see many wonderful organisations that are working incredibly hard to liberate, empower and educate the victims as well as educate us: the rest of the world, about this growing human rights issue.

So without further ado, the charity we have selected is the Somaly Mam Foundation. The Foundation works alongside AFESIP Cambodia to rescue, rehabilitate, reintegrate and educate women and children that have been sold into the sex trade in Cambodia. The Foundation works to eradicate sex slavery, liberate its victims and empower survivors to create and sustain lives of dignity.

 

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We’ve added a twist to this year’s approach. Dine for Life has joined forces with Sydney-based not for profit Project Futures, who are representatives of the Somaly Mam Foundation in Australia. The story of how Project Futures started is not unlike that of Dine for Life’s, so when we found the Somaly Mam Foundation and saw that this Aussie posse over in Sydney were also champions of the cause, we gave Stephanie; the founder, a call and proposed a collaboration that would strengthen our ability to raise awareness and deliver the funds raised at Dine for Life’s dinner to the right place.

Cheers to strength in numbers!

 

 

 

A letter from the founders

Monday, August 19th, 2013

 

Dine for Life has been made aware of the allegations of financial mismanagement directed at SISHA founder and chief executive Steve Morrish.

As our first priority is to our restaurants, corporate sponsors, contributing sponsors, our guests and the public, we have made the decision to withdraw our support from SISHA for the immediate future pending an independent audit of the organisation’s finances.

Dine for Life is proud to have supported SISHA last year in raising funds for their Raids & Rescues department, which helped SISHA rescue and rehabilitate victims of human trafficking, bonded labour and rape.

Dine for Life is continuing its focus on helping women and children affected by human trafficking with its Dinner 2013 event in both Perth and Melbourne and is currently reviewing potential charities who work in this specific field to become the beneficiaries of these two fantastic events.

We look forward to announcing the recipient of the Dinner 2013 shortly.

Thank you for all of your support to date. We are working incredibly hard to ensure the event is a success and most importantly that your donations are going to directly help the women and children in need.

Andjelka Matic & Natasha Di Ciano

 

 

 

 

 

 

WHY CHARITIES NEED TO MAKE MONEY: DINE FOR LIFE’S EDUCATION ON IDEALISM VS. REALISM

Thursday, July 18th, 2013

By: Andjelka Matic

 

 

Dine for Life is an all-volunteer-based fundraising organization that started in 2009 with two girls wanting to ‘make a difference’ to the world around them, in their spare time, outside of their working hours. Four years and five events later, our organization has grown to an amazing annual fundraising event that donates 100% of the proceeds directly to the charities we are supporting.

The annual event has grown, seen volunteers come and go and Natasha and myself still remain at its helm driving it forward, eager to make it sustainable and continue to affect change in people’s lives who need it the most.

Up until this point, both myself and my partner-in-idealistic-crime Natasha have been dedicating our time in guiding this annual event to organically grow into something bigger and better each time.

It has grown and gathered enough momentum whereby it has now become too big to be run by two women, on a volunteer basis, without it taking over our lives completely and impacting our ability to earn a living.

Reality check time!

Dine for Life was a personal mission for us to prove that you can successfully run a fundraising organization or charity operated solely by volunteers, that would allow for a 100% donation model to be possible. Perfect! Why wasn’t EVERYONE doing it this way? Charities didn’t need overheads, they needed volunteers. We thought we had all the answers.

With each event, the eager and willing volunteers we brought into the fold at the beginning became exhausted and overworked by the end. Volunteering is an extracurricular activity but when so much work falls on a few key people, this time expands and takes over. It’s only natural that a university student is going to have to set aside her volunteer work in favour of studying for exams or an employee do the same to complete their work deadline.

Watching this reality unfold event after event and after a revolving door of volunteers to manage, Natasha and I were starting to see the idealism with which we began this project was starting to develop cracks. Yes sure, if only we could win Lotto and somehow find wealthy women and men who were not required to work for a living, who were just as passionate as we were and would “volunteer” what is essentially a full time work week in order to grow and develop this charity platform for helping the world.

And so we come to today.

Not only have we depleted most of our volunteer pool (to those amazing volunteers that are still with us and continuing to give your time and hard work, THANK YOU), dipped into our own pockets to fund expenses, taken time and resources from our own lives and businesses to make Dine for Life events as good as they can be and are now faced with the decision of expanding to be able to make more of a difference to the cause we support because what we have done has the power to change lives. It’s knowing this, that drives us to continue doing the work despite its challenges. I would never have imagined that Dine for Life would be where it is now or that we would be privileged enough to be able to help those less fortunate. And now that we have really harnessed our focus on the issue of human trafficking and other forms of exploitation of women and children, our drive, passion and determination to make any difference to those affected has truly been cemented.

The simple reality however, is that in order to move forward we need to rethink our position. I’m exhausted, Natasha is exhausted and now, instead of each event being an exciting adventure for us, it’s a case of anxious sideward glances in each others’ direction. Knowing how much work lies ahead, knowing we’re about to tackle another event with almost no volunteers and knowing that by the time the event is over we will be shadows of our former selves, trembling with exhaustion, praying for a pause button somewhere that can give us a few months off before embarking on the planning of the NEXT event. No such button exists, trust me, I have turned my house upside down looking for it.

So, with this picture painted, we look at the now. Natasha is eager to develop Dine for Life into a charity and I am still clutching at the last few shreds of my idealistic view on how it can be done the way we set out initially, if only we could find those perfect volunteers, and if only we could win Lotto.

I still struggle with all of my own personal judgments on charities and shake my head in disappointment when I hear that charities in some countries are required by law to give a meager 3% of their earnings to the cause itself.

Or the fact that a charity CEO can earn in excess of $200k to do this saintly work…where is the altruism in this? Where is the spirit of giving? Couldn’t some of that $200k be better spent on the people who really need it? These thoughts and judgments recycle themselves over and over in my mind and I know that these thoughts are ones I share with a large portion of the public. I too am the public. I too wanted to give everything while taking nothing. I believed that a charity could run and succeed and sustain itself long-term on the passion of a few. I think I may have been dreaming.

And then came the email.

Subject: Very interesting perspective – changed my view!

Sender: Natasha.

I highlight this email as a reminder to review at a later time and carry on with my day. Two days later I sit down and open it again, click on the link and the next 18 minutes revolutionises the way I think about charities. The speaker in the video is Dan Pallotta. I Wiki him and check to see any controversy surrounding his viewpoints or any critics but all I find is literature he’s written and critical acclaim on his viewpoints and perspective on the not-for-profit sector. I note his book title for purchase and forward the video link to everyone I know with whom I have had the conversation about charities making large profits and the CEO’s rolling in their Benzes and wait eagerly for their feedback.

In the meantime, I would like to share with you this same video and eagerly await your thoughts and feedback.