#cassangapower

Are you a Gutsy Girl?

Up until last year I knew nothing about adventure film tours. I went along to the Banff film festival with Cass and absolutely loved it; I even won a jet boiler as a door prize and yep you guessed it Cass ended up having it "Come on Mother Goose" she said "When are you going to use something like that". Of course she was right.....

Needless to say I was hooked on these adventure films. So this time last year I booked tickets for the Gutsy Girls Adventure film tour at the Village Crown. Cass was in Japan working at the time, but that didn't stop us from making her feel apart of the experience. Colin sent her this photo he took in the cinema.

Looking through my messages I sent Cass this;

'You can climb any mountain, paddle any stream, jump out of any plane because you’re our GUTSY GIRL'

She replied "Ha ha so true".......

And that she was, and that she did!!

I sent Cass a parcel and included a Gutsy girl sticker. After Cass' passing when we were going through her belongings, we found the sticker in her journal.

Somehow that sticker became a connection and part of our story.

After buying tickets to the upcoming Gutsy Girls Adventure Film tour, we decided to take a leap of faith and contact Adventure Reels in the hope that we could use the opportunity to promote the Cassanga fund and sell some adventure raffle tickets.

That leap of faith turned out to be so much more than we could ever have hoped for. Not only were we welcomed open heartedly, we were also invited to speak after intermission and attend the next screening at the Astor theatre in St Kilda.

Tamara commenced the evening with a general introduction to the films; she then went on to talk about Cass' story. We were totally taken by surprise with Tamara's most beautiful and heartwarming welcome and her encouragement around supporting the Cassanga fund.

We set up our display ready for intermission.

We were absolutely overwhelmed by the support we received; we sold 5 raffle books during the break and had lots of positive comments. People were very supportive of what we are doing; we even got some lovely hugs. 💓 💓

Both nights were amazing. Limiting my speech to a few minutes was challenging, I could speak all night long about Cassanga, her achievements, her story.....

A big thank you to Christine and Georgia from the Cassanga Fund Team who came and helped out. Thank you to everyone that supported the Cassanga Fund, bought raffle tickets and / or donated a dollar or two. A big thank you to Tamara and Adventure Reels Gutsy Girls film tour for providing the space to promote our fund.

All together we raised over $1000 with ticket sales and donations. Two Nepali girls bought some tickets; they were so excited to hear of our plans to create a Cassanga Adventure Sister School in Nepal.

It's moments like this when I'm feeling so pumped and extremely grateful that the heartache and sadness fades into the background. Although it is short lived I'm grateful that I have something to hold onto, something to strive for, a clear purpose and direction, a resolve from the grief, loss and emptiness all the while feeling so proud to honour our beautiful girls legacy. It makes me feel so HAPPY🙏🤗😇💜

Forever in our hearts Gutsy Girl💞💓❣️