Quiz time quiz time quiz time

Many updates on the main Oxfam website worth looking into.

During the week of March 8th, Oxfam is asking us to celebrate women’s achievements for International Women’s Days. Browse through the tabs at the link for more information on why this is important and why you should get involved.  

Follow these links for information about floods on Sri Lanka and Colombia, and updates on Pakistan and Haiti.  There’s also an excellent general guide to Oxfam’s work here, well worth a look.

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February is Crime Month at the bookshop. We’ve seen a significant growth in crime donations and sales across our network over the last few years. It’s a genuine success story. For us, Crime Month has been great for drawing in new customers and showcasing the variety of stock we have.  

Also our fifth Literary Quiz will be happening in February at the 78, probably in the last week. I’ll update with the exact date as soon as we finalise it. It will be fiendish, as always.

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2011

I think “The Year Britain Froze” is the title of an upcoming Channel 4 show about the extreme winter we’ve had (I say ‘had’ in the hope that another similar freeze is not lurking in late Jan/early Feb). Regardless, businesses must be run as best they can. It was a difficult period, both for us and retail in general, but we’ve survived intact (and this is including a spate of local power-cuts in the run-up). The last week of Christmas trading was a lifesaver for the bookshop, balancing the slower footfall we were experiencing over December in general. It’s Christmas after all, and people simply have to get what they need, grit or no grit.

So, forward then, with an eye on the end of financial year. There’s a lot happening in between now and then. Comic Relief, Valentine’s, Fairtrade Fortnight to name a few events. And at the shop we have our annual crime month in February. At the moment we’re concentrating on promoting gift aid, the scheme whereby we can reclaim tax on sales of donated goods. This amounts to considerable extra revenue for us as a network, so it’s important to ensure the public are aware of Gift Aid and how it benefits us when they sign up.

I hope you all had a good Christmas and New Year, and here’s to 2011.

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