The following is a report from Nicola Martin of Maldon Wycke WI (Women's Institute) on a successful charity fundraising event in aid of Breast Canwer Now and Marie Curie.

Committee members organized a charity fundraising afternoon - this took the form of a mini fete and afternoon tea, with all Maldon Wycke members invited to attend.

This was held in one of our member's beautiful gardens. Despite the great British weather trying its best to spoil our fun, we overcame. Four gazebos were swiftly erected and umbrellas became part of the 'to bring list'. Luckily, we only suffered a little drizzle on and off.

We had a great raffle with all prizes very kindly donated by local businesses, a tombola, a bring and buy stall and various fete games – Guess the Weight of the Cake, Guess how many Sweets in a Jar, Guess how many Scones on a picture, Guess where the Butterfly was hiding on the Flower, Splat the Rat and Roll a Tuppence.

Prizes for the games were handmade craft items.

During the afternoon members enjoyed an afternoon tea before the prize giving, raffle draw and final tally was announced. An amazing amount of £865 was raised. This is being split equally between Breast Cancer Now and Marie Curie.

These charities were chosen due to one of our members battling breast cancer over the pandemic and we had a speaker talk to us over zoom at a WI meeting from Marie Curie.

A huge well done and thank you to the committee members for organising and for members and friends for their very kind donations.

We now look forward to our first official WI meeting back at our venue, face to face in September.