We are famously a nation of tea drinkers, so why not have a ‘Tea for ME’ to help us raise funds and awareness of ME too? Bake a cake, cut the crusts off a loaf and dust off that never used china tea set. As you serve up a morning of good conversation, your friends and family can find out more about ME too.
Recipe for a successful Tea for ME
Above all, your event needs to be enjoyable and all it needs is a little bit of thought and planning. However, we’ve created some tools to make the task easier.
Where and when?
It is probably easier to hold your Tea for ME event in your own home or, weather permitting, in your garden. When, depends on you, but ideally we’d aim to have a string of events to coincide with ME Awareness Week. The dates differ each year but ME Awareness Week always includes Florence Nightingale’s birthday on 12th May.
You’ll probably need to provide the following things:
- Coffee, tea, milk and sugar
- Tables, chairs and tablecloths
- Biscuits, cakes and sandwiches
- Cutlery, plates, cake-stand, teapots, cups and saucers
- Posters and invitations
Your guests will probably be expecting home-baked items, or you could buy ready-made cakes, or ask your family and friends to bring baking along on the day. Contact us if you would like an image file of our logo, which is ideal to have printed on icing as the finishing touch to any cupcake.
Publicity
To get a good turnout at your Tea for ME event, you’ll need to invite a large group of friends and relatives to join you. Aim for about 10 people to attend because any more will make most people’s houses a little cluttered – never mind the washing-up afterwards!
We have simple tickets and posters that you can personalise and print out.
Fundraising
You will need to charge a set ticket price which is the initial donation (perhaps ask for £5 as this is reasonable) and then work on other ways to increase your total. If you contact us, we can send you some small collection boxes to make collecting easier.
Raising awareness
Your event is the ideal opportunity to let your guests learn more about ME and also about the research work which ME Research UK funds. If you contact us, we can send out leaflets and back issues of Breakthrough magazines.
On the day
Make it pretty! A well laid-out table of cups, saucers and cakes is a thing of beauty! Your guests will feel very special and your event will go well. You could even take a photo and e-mail it to us for our Facebook page. We’d love to raise a cup to each event as it happens!
Afterwards
Please thank everyone who helped with your Tea for ME event and your guests. As for the donations, these can be sent, as a cheque, by post to ME Research UK, The Gateway, North Methven Street, Perth, or can be paid by debit or credit card over the phone (01738 451234) or online.
