Syria Raffleblog day 8 and a half - £1001

A guest post today from my friend Jo in Birmingham , who is working extremely hard on this:

Well, we're over the £1000 mark. One thousand and one pounds raised in just over a week. A really big thank you to every single person who has donated so far.

There's a great story behind the £50 that took us over that first really big milestone. Hand in Hand for Syria tweeted yesterday to say that a boy of seven had decided to swim the English Channel to raise money for them. Joseph had seen an episode of Newsround about the conflict and decided he wanted to do something to help.

So when I sent Joseph a message to tell him how amazing his plan was and that we would donate, he sent a message back telling us he would ask his parents to donate on our page.

And that was the £50 donation that took us over £1000. A remarkable little boy with extremely generous parents.

Because he is only seven Joseph isn't allowed to swim the real Channel, so he is going to do the 21 miles (33,796 metres) in a pool and is swimming nearly every day. He hopes to visit Syrian refugees in Turkey when he has done his swimming. Here's his website: www.josephswims.com

As to our £10,000 target, we realise that the 'easy' donations have been had. After a good planning meeting this morning we think we still have a couple of methods left to reach our immediate contacts, but now the hunt is on for a broader network of people to donate.

There are plenty of ideas in the pipeline, but with small children and busy working lives they're joining a queue of things to do. Facebook is our friend, we hope, so on the to do list for this week is to start reaching a wider network of people online. More news will follow.