TransitionTimes: Mounting a fashion show seemed a good way to help a charity. But the student organisers needed dogged determination

Transition-year students Loren Ryan and Rachael Ryan approached the Children's Sunshine Home last September to ask for some voluntary work. The pair, from Mount Anville Secondary School, in south Dublin, were hoping to fulfil the community-involvement requirement of the President's Award. Staff at the home, in Foxrock, couldn't help, as Loren and Rachael were too young to work with children with very special needs.

While the students were there, however, they saw how staff struggled with a lack of resources. "One of the children had breathing difficulties. The staff were under pressure because they only have one suction machine.

"We decided to raise enough money for a second machine. If we couldn't work at the Sunshine Home, we could work to support the staff," says Loren.

The students had a brainstorming session and decided that a fashion show would elicit enough interest to raise the €2,000 needed to buy a second suction machine. With three other students - Emma O'Callaghan, Fiona Roberts and Blaithnead Ní Nullain - they set up an organising committee. "The idea sounded so simple, but when we started to organise it we realised just how much was involved," says Rachael. "At several points we thought that we would have to abandon the whole project."

Professional models failed to materialise, fashion sponsors pulled out at the last minute and countless clothes shops and stylists failed to take the group seriously because of their ages. "We realised two things early on," says Rachael. "We needed to get organised to be taken seriously. We needed dogged determination to get a result."

The students put together a proposal pack for potential sponsors, including an endorsement letter from the Sunshine Home, a formal letter on headed school paper and details of the insurance available if any borrowed clothes or accessories went missing.

"After sending out the packs we just kept ringing, writing and persisting until we got all the support we needed. We had plenty of internal conflict, many hopeless days and a lot of frustration, but we stuck with it. Many people thought we had taken on too much and expected us to fail. Our parents supported us all the way, though."

In the end, the fashion show, held at Mount Anville's school hall last Wednesday, was a sell-out. The students raised enough for not one but two new suction machines - and learned a lifetime's worth of business lessons in the process.