Cape Town, 16 September 2016: A creamy milkshake can make the world seem like a better place, and in this case, it really does. Hotel group Protea Hotels by Marriott® Fire & Ice! have teamed up with the Giggling Gourmet Jenny Morris to create a mouth-watering milkshake to raise awareness for The Sunflower Fund.
The Protea Hotels by Marriott Fire & Ice! properties are famous for their fun, quirky and ‘udderly delicious’ milkshakes and will now, for a limited period only, offer a milkshake in aid of raising awareness for The Sunflower Fund.
It may sound bananas, but the bonkers milkshake actually features…butternut. The roasted veg will be blended with stewed peaches, spices, toasted nuts, yoghurt, honey and vanilla ice cream.
You can visit Protea Hotel Fire & Ice! by Marriott Johannesburg Melrose Arch, Protea Hotel Fire & Ice! by Marriott Pretoria Menlyn, and Protea Hotel Fire & Ice! by Marriott Cape Town, from Friday 16 September (aka ‘Sunflower Day’) to experience the taste explosion for yourself and learn what The Sunflower Fund is all about.
You will also be able to purchase a tope for R20 (small) or R25 (large), which raises much-needed funds and awareness for the national bone marrow registry.
Formerly Bandana Day, the organisation has rebranded to sell multipurpose topes each year on and around the new Sunflower Day (celebrated on the third Friday in September annually), with the all new tagline: “Hope begins with you!”
A tope, if you’re wondering, is “a multipurpose article of clothing, with practical functionality, and can be worn in a variety of ways – headband, mask, scarf, cap or armband.”
The Sunflower Fund is a South African non-profit organisation dedicated to creating awareness, educating the public and facilitating the registration process for people to join the South African Bone Marrow Registry (SABMR).
According to Alana James, CEO of The Sunflower Fund: “Recruiting donors to the SABMR is fundamental to saving South Africans lives each year. The chance of finding a matching donor is 1 in 100 000 – and as ethnic origin plays a significant role in the search for a donor, South Africa’s rainbow nation requires a large pool of prospective donors.”
Their aim is to increase the number of donors on the registry to at least 400 000, which will significantly improve patients’ prospects of finding matching stem cell donors in order to undergo life-saving stem cell transplants.
If you’d like to register as a stem cell donor, you can find the information you need here: http://www.sunflowerfund.org.za/be-a-donor/register-stem-cell-donor/
It takes just two test tubes of your blood for you to be registered – and potentially to give someone the hope of life. For The Sunflower Fund, however, the cost of adding a donor to the registry is expensive. The R2 000 outlay per potential donor is covered by the Fund through fundraising initiatives like Sunflower Day. So, if you both register as a donor and make a voluntary contribution to this expense, it’s a huge help to this life-saving organisation.
