Back in late 2010 we were approached by two lovely ladies from Hear the Children (after they saw what a great job we did for Wings Away) to work on the Tour de Hills website.
The Tour de Hills is a charity bike ride event held every year to raise funds for the Rotary Club of Castle Hill and they pass on the donations to their selected Charities. This year the major charity was Hear the Children, a not for profit organisation that helps hearing impaired children and babies to learn to talk.
We started this project with a very clean slate as the previous years website pretty much pointed keen cyclists to a PayPal account with a very loosely put together payment process, which caused a lot of riders to get confused and caused a lot of work for our friends at Rotary. We brain stormed up some ideas and we looked down the barrel of a good 2 months work. We were given the time frame of a little under a month to get the site ready to take registrations and run a personalized homepage for all registrants, so that they can update everyone on their progress leading up to the event.
— Insert Rocky styled montage of web design & web development here —
So, long story short, the site was finished in time (but only just), the feedback on the design and development was constantly complimentary, record numbers in attendance, more sponsorship, a great time had by all and a record $48,872 worth of donations.
I’ll now pass the trumpet on to the Rotary Club of Castle Hill and the Hear the Children, my lips are sore from blowing it so much already!
Dear Ben, Mark, Scott & all at Orion,
Just a short note to offer to you all a very big THANK YOU for what you have done in developing and implementing the Tour de Hills website for Castle Hill Rotary Club.Your diligence and patience in dealing with us in fulfilling our requirements and doing it in such a small time frame was truly remarkable and we are indebted to you all.We are acutely aware that this was done for us,knowing that your own business would suffer, and for this I express my personal thanks together with those from the Board of Directors and members of Castle Hill Rotary Club. The Tour de Hills event was an outstanding success in every respect and your contribution went a very long way in making it the success that it was. Ben I hope your legs are ok after your ride, but just think a little bit more laterally. You and I know you can now do the 100km, because you have now done your apprenticeship.
Thank you all once again for your support and especially to our favoured charity Hear The Children.
Kind Regards
Mike Blair
Chairman of the Organising Committee
Tour de Hills
Rotary Club of Castle Hill
Dear Mark, Ben and other Space Cadets at Orion,
I wanted to take this opportunity to say a heart-felt thank you to you, on behalf of Hear the Children, for your wonderful support of the 2011 Tour de Hills Bicycle Classic. Not only did you give the event a brilliant website, but the platform this new, beautiful site provided enabled the event to flourish and be the successful it was.
As you know, this year saw a record attendance with registrations more than tripling on last years’ event – and yielded a record amount in terms of funds raised for both Hear the Children and the other very deserving community organizations supported by the Tour de Hills event.
Thanks to your good selves, and others who were similarly as generous (such as our wonderful partners, Fairfax Community News and Rouse Hill Town Centre) Hear the Children will gain over $30,000 from this event. This is a significant amount for our Service, as you can imagine, and will allow us to continue to provide life-changing therapy, free of charge, to hearing impaired babies and preschoolers – giving them the miraculous gift of speech.
So thank you. You are all wonderful.
Warm regards,
Yvonne Keane
Co-President
Hear the Children Early Intervention Centre
