Now, however, they are left with an empty, but fully furnished room. “It’s terrible. So unrealistic,” Floor Dijkgraaf, the director of the foundation, told LINDA.nl. “I still feel like I’m in a bad dream.” She explains that the DON Foundation is fully committed to curing diabetes type-1, but they need evenings like this one.
Event
“We have to rely on such events, and that has of course been standing still for some time. With November we thought it was safe to bet, but nothing turned out to be less true.” For this evening the foundation had sold tables to already known donors and hopefully new donors. They also had an auction planned, among other things. “Now we have to try to motivate people with a live stream.”
Bringing the event forward was not an option, explains the director. “Not in twelve hours. The catering would come with eighty employees. You can’t just move it all. So now we’re just looking at a very large and empty room, covered up and all. It is very sad.”
Important research
Dijkgraaf and other employees are now busy all day calling their original guests, asking if they would like to log in online at 7 p.m. “That is our only option. We stand with our backs against the wall. But it’s really heartwarming to hear how everyone reacts and sympathizes in this bizarre situation.”
And that’s great, because the aim of this evening was to raise no less than 1.5 million euros for this new research. “This is necessary. The patients need us. We understand very well that there are rules, but corona should not stop this research. It’s too important for that. With this money we can carry out this research, and we only keep that goal in mind,” said the director.
Food and flowers
Another consequence of this sudden rule is refrigerators full of food (for nine hundred guests) and endless flowers that were waiting for the volunteers. “We are going to bring the food to the Pauluskerk in Rotterdam, for the homeless. We take the flowers to the retirement home, for the people who have also been much lonelier than usual for such a long time. With this we also try to get something nice out of this terrible situation.”
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