Everywhere We Go! – Iceland, September 2008 (Donation 25)

The recipient of the Iceland presentation was Hringurinn (which in English means the ring). It’s a voluntary women’s organisation which is more then 100 years old and its primary function is to help support the Children’s Hospital and its activities within Iceland.

Firstly the background in their words
In short:

Hringurinn (in English: The Ring) is a voluntary women’s organization, more than 100 years old, started originally to give help to sick and poor women and children. About 50 years ago it´s efforts were concentrated on the establishment of a children´s hospital in Iceland. Since then our main goal has been to support the Children’s hospital, including the Children’s mental hospital, and many other activities that concern sick children and treatment of children’s diseases.

We are now about 330 women in our organization. We all donate our work to maintain the activities of our organization, the main of which is to collect funds for the support of these activities. We have given money to build the Children’s hospital, to buy new equipment and to renew old. For these purposes we sell Christmas cards, cards in the remembrance of deceased and gift cards for special occasions. Once a year we sell cakes and various items of our own handcraft, that have been in preparation for months.

We also receive direct monetary grants from individuals and companies who wish to support our work for sick children. All the money goes into the Children’s Fund for distribution according to it´s rules, after formal requests for support.

The Presentation.

The presentation was organised by Neil McDonald who arranged for this to happen on the afternoon of Match day in Reykjavik and was joined by various footsoliders who happened to be in the Highlander who were looking for an hours break from the local beer prices.
Neil also contacted the British Embassy with Reykjavik to let them know about the presentation and with the assistance of Ardis Sigurdardottir, the press and public affairs officer for the Embassy, our group was not only greeted with photographers and a TV crew but also the British ambassador for Iceland plus a representative for the Norwegian Embassy. The end result was that the presentation was covered by Icelandic TV and press giving the Tartan Army some very good publicity into the hearts of the Icelandic people.

The group also enjoyed lunch provided by the Charity, the presentation of a book outlining the history of Hringurinn and brief tour of what the hospital has to offer to the children of Iceland. And of course being asked for autographs from the cleaners

In the whole a very successful presentation.

If anyone has a copy of the Icelandic TV News report about this donation, we would appreciate if you could forward a copy of the file for inclusion here.