ActionAid's social networking site adds ethical wedding list service
Howard Lake | 27 February 2007 | News
International development agency ActionAid has launched an ethical wedding list to help brides and grooms avoid a stack of unwanted presents while encouraging guests to spend money on donations instead. The service is part of the charity’s newly launched social networking site MyActionAid.org.uk.
ActionAid’s alternative wedding list includes textbooks for five children in Afghanistan for one term at £15, and nutritious porridge for one year for 14 Aids orphans in Malawi for £75.
ActionAid provides the happy couple with specially designed wedding list cards to send out with their invitations, which list examples of what can be achieved for the price of a wedding present and explains how guests can donate.
Advertisement
It can all be organised online at MyActionAid.org.uk where couples can set up their own wedding page complete with photo albums, blogs and a facility to receive and track donations.
Closer to the big day the wedding couple then receive a certificate with the total amount raised and a personal message from ActionAid to read out at the reception.
ActionAid fundraising spokesperson Helen Yeomans helped create ActionAid Wedding Lists and has just set up her own list ahead of her wedding.
She said: “My boyfriend recently popped the question, but as we’ve been living together for a while we have enough kettles, toasters and saucepans to last a lifetime so we’d really like people to donate to ActionAid instead. We’ve set up our own wedding page online.”
About Howard Lake
Howard Lake is consultant editor of UK Fundraising. He founded the site in 1994 and successfully sold it in 2022. As director of Giving X Ltd he is exploring growing giving on a massive scale.
He is the founder of Fundraising Camp and co-founder of GoodJobs.