On the 23rd of May, we will be celebrating the birthday of Samantha Grass, on-boarding administrator in our Cape Town Office, South Africa. Every year for the past 4 years, Sam has celebrated her birthday by either raising funds for an individual, organization or by requesting toiletry and food donations for the homeless in Cape Town. This year, Sam’s birthday wish is to raise R30, 000.00 in donations for various charities.

We had the pleasure of sitting down with Sam to hear her story.

Why did you decide to fundraise every year for your birthday? I started this project at the age of 25 with the help of my partner Ethan, sister and family, and every year from that age I’ve tried to donate funds or goods each year on my birthday to the homeless or an organisation. This automatically filtered into a monthly and daily purpose to give. The year of my 27th Birthday I felt in my heart to give something different other than food and blankets. The idea then came to after reading an article written by my good friend Danny, it gave me insight into giving with a purpose, understanding and putting yourself in other’s shoes. I had arranged to meet up with Danny to further pursue the idea and the rest is history. Danny has played a huge role in where I’m at today.

Why these specific charities? Both of these organizations are in the communities I’ve grown up in, I see first-hand the challenges organizations and individuals face when it comes to requesting funding or hosting a fundraiser, my goal is always to be able to fill that gap by connecting them to the right individual’s and also running campaigns which assists them in being able to sustain their day to day running of business.

Are your chosen charities different for each year? Yes, the more people we can assist the better. Our main focus has always been homelessness in Cape Town, however, we also like to focus on individual fundraising. There are many kids and adults in our communities who are approached with an amazing opportunity to either go overseas for sport, needing to pay for commercial flights to attend trials, or needing funds raised for educational purposes, and in most cases, their families struggle to raise these sort of funds on their own. This is where we come in to assist, as there are many people whose talents go un-noticed as they might not of had the opportunity to pursue it on a larger scale due to lack of funding. We’d like to be that gap for them.

What impact do these donations have on these charities? It would be able to give them some sort of relief in the day to day running of their organisations, I know most of the time the day to day running is self-funded which can become costly for the individual running things, I’m hoping our assistance can make things a little bit better.

Why is this so important to you? I think the most important thing for me is being able to assist the communities around me, engaging with people on a personal level and creating long lasting friendships along the way. We are always going to need each other as we simply cannot go through life alone. I love the phrase “We are better together” as it’s something I truly believe and live by. I hope for us to continue this for many years to come.

If you would like to contribute to Sam’s cause, please click on the link below.