One day, a little boy Leanu came into my office, and VERY enthusiastically told me about his Stikeez collection and that he has a few doubles that he needs to swap to complete his collection. This was the first glimpse of the infamous Stikeez craze which proved to be one of the biggest and most successful marketing campaigns in the history of South Africa.
The idea to create a spot where the children can come and drop off their extra ones and swap their doubles came up, and soon enough we started with a few:
This is what we started out with…
More than 200 children streamed into our offices within 2 weeks and the collection grew daily. I soon realized that we will eventually have quite a lot of Stikeez which we will be able to donate. Childhood cancer and the kids going through this have always had a soft spot in my heart – and it was decided that we will hand out the extras at the Unitas oncology ward. *A big thank you to Carina Fourie at Unitas hospital for your arrangements.* In a search for the very popular Stikeez albums, we eventually found stock at the Pick n Pay in Mafikeng. Once again a willing fellow Centurion citizen collected this for us all the way from there (Thanks Angela Coetzer & your husband!). We also had a competition to guess the amount of Stikeez collected, Rudolph Jordaan was the winner, he guessed 2750 – only 3 more than the correct amount! (He wins a hearing test!)
Fun facts about this project:
- Number of Stikeez collected: 2747
- Number of votes in the competition: 627
- Amount of money spent for all the Stikeez: R412 050.00
Big amounts of Stikeez were donated by 3 different schools, Volkskool Heidelberg, Laerskool Elarduspark and Midstream college, and one lady even sent 200 Stikeez via courier from Zeerust!! We even made the paper!!!
I want to extend a great big thank you to every single child / person that came to drop 1 or 2 or 10 or 50 Stikeez in our box. Some children even donated their whole hard earned collection.
Here are some of the pictures of the kids in the ward with their Stikeez. * A big thank you to Monique Gouws from Monnas Photography who took the pictures for us!*
September is Childhood Cancer awareness month. Be aware of the symptoms!
