The Cost Behind the Coins

To the public, it looked like a celebration—smiling faces, club jackets, the sound of coins rattling in the buckets. People would stop and say kind things, drop a euro or two, and move on with their day. But what they didn’t see was what it cost us to be there. The long hours on our feet. The cold. The hunger behind some of those smiles.

No one wanted to admit they couldn’t afford lunch. So they’d say, “I’ll take my break later,” or “I’m fine—let someone else go.” It became a silent understanding. Some volunteers brought food from home. Others didn’t have that option. And while the club raised hundreds—sometimes thousands—on a good day, very little of that ever circled back to the people shaking the buckets.

Pam and Alising did their best to hold it all together, but even they couldn’t stretch a day’s fundraising far enough to fix the deeper problem: we were raising money for an organisation that couldn’t—or wouldn’t—properly support the very people doing the fundraising.

We were the face of the club, but behind that face were skipped meals, blistered feet, and the quiet knowledge that for all the money we helped raise, we were still struggling.

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