On Tuesday 10 September the Peace Direct team held an event called ‘Pitching for Peace’ to coincide with the Tomorrow’s Peacebuilder Prize.
Current and new supporters enjoyed champagne and canapés in John McAslan + Partners Studios in central London. The multi award winning architect has designed projects around the world including in conflict areas and offered Peace Direct the beautiful venue free of charge.
Lord Jack McConnell, former First Minister of Scotland and one of the Tomorrow’s Peacebuilder jury, introduced the event and spoke about the difficulty the jury had faced in selecting just four winners. The event invited guests to ‘pitch’ a peacebuilder to the room from the prize shortlist of nine. Pitches were three minutes and guests were thoroughly entertained by each other’s presentations.
For us at Peace Direct, the evening was particularly useful to discover what our supporters found compelling about the different organisations and their work. Peace Direct’s CEO Carolyn then led a lively discussion on what Peace Direct could do to build its profile and support in its tenth year (coming up in 2014!). We are so lucky to have supporters from a range of business, personal and philanthropic backgrounds who gave us some great ideas of how we can make Peace Direct even better in the future.
Guests were asked to contribute whatever they were able to help Peace Direct move forward with it’s exciting plans and a very generous donor had agreed to match all donations meaning the support could go twice as far. We are still totalling up but the evening has so far raised over £5,000 for Peace Direct’s work.
A huge thank you to everyone who attended and helped with the event, we love meeting and chatting to our supporters and we hope you enjoyed it as much as we did. If you were unable to come this time please keep an eye out for upcoming events in 2014, we would love to see you there!
