WANT TO own football strips signed by both the Celtic and Rangers first teams or a rugby ball signed by Scotland's two Grand Slam-winning captains?
Or perhaps your preference is learning to drive an express train, luxuriating in one of Scotland's
best spas, or spending a day as one of the historical cast at the new Culloden battlefield experience.
These are just some of the new lots available this weekend in Scotland on Sunday's Christmas Appeal online auction on behalf of the charity Sightsavers International, which aims to prevent blindness in developing countries around the world.
Tickets for a Hearts SPL game in the New Year are also up for grabs, as are tickets for the Connect music festival in Inveraray next summer, the chance to see rock band James at Edinburgh's Corn Exchange or to eat at Two Fat Ladies at The Buttery, Glasgow.
The fundraising auction, run by QXL, was launched last weekend with final bids to be made by midnight next Sunday, December 23. Bidders can join in this week by logging on to
www.scotlandonsunday.com and clicking on the Charity Auction box on the right-hand side of the screen. Minimum reserve bids on the lots are £25.
Hundreds of bids have already been placed for a range of exciting lots, including taking part in the Tall Ships race, becoming a character in a Christopher Brookmyre novel and a fabulous opportunity to get your child a place at the summer school run by the world-famous Gordonstoun School in Morayshire.
Jeremy Watson in TanzaniaReporter Jeremy Watson and photographer Robert Perry visited Tanzania and filed these special reports on the people there and how Sightsavers is helping.
Watch these video reports:
Top lot in terms of money at present is the opportunity for four people to fly by helicopter from Edinburgh to St Andrews for lunch at the clifftop St Andrews Bay resort. The leading bid is currently £255.
The most popular item so far – with 86 bids – is Travel in Style, in which readers get the chance to parade around in a chauffeur-driven Mercedes for eight hours.
Other popular lots include the Girlie Night In (£245), being named in the Brookmyre novel (£210), a night with Scotland on Sunday columnist Hardeep Singh Kohli, in which he will cook for you and your friends in your own home (£210) and the chance for three golfers to play a round at the exclusive Loch Lomond Golf Club (£205).
A bottle of the new, limited-edition Imperial Tribute Whisky is also exciting interest with bids standing at £185. Readers in search of an image makeover have also bid £185 so far for the services of public relations company Platform PR.
Altogether, there are almost 60 lots, with donations from the worlds of high fashion, jewellery, sports, the arts, business and hospitality.
Friday brought the Bring 50p to Work Day initiative, launched by Scotland on Sunday to boost its Christmas Appeal for Sightsavers. Companies and organisations who took part should contact
chay@scotlandonsunday.com to be credited in the newspaper for their efforts.
New organisations who signed up last week include The Media Shop Scotland and Kaimes School in Edinburgh. The 46 pupils at Ancrum Primary in the Borders, on their own initiative, held a non-uniform day for the charity and raised £30.60.
Sightsavers, which has a fundraising office in Edinburgh, has been the focus of Scotland on Sunday's Christmas Appeal for the last three years.
Last month, senior writer Jeremy Watson and photographer Robert Perry visited Sightsavers-supported projects in Tanzania to see how donations were spent.
In some villages in the east African country's arid interior, up to half of the population – mainly women and children – are affected by trachoma, a conjunctivitis-type condition which can lead on to blindness.
Yet funds are short for the tubes of ointment – costing just 50p – used to treat the condition, as well as for the simple £5 operations that will reverse trichiasis, the most severe form of the disease. When trichiasis develops, the eyelids turn in on themselves and the cornea becomes scarred, effectively blinding the sufferer
Trachoma, a bacterial infection, is spread by flies, and the lack of water in central Tanzania means it cannot be spared for basic hygiene, such as regularly washing children's faces.
In some schools, children just need spectacles to help them take part in lessons. Yet because the school, or their parents, cannot afford the risk of the glasses being broken, they have to be handed back to teachers at the end of lessons.
Scotland on Sunday Christmas Appeal -- Q&A
What does Sightsavers do?
Sightsavers works with local partners to combat blindness in developing countries, restoring sight through specialist treatment and eye care. We also support people who are irreversibly blind by providing education, counselling and training. We help the people who need it most - those living in poverty in some of the world's poorest countries – by supporting the development of long-term projects.
Where will donations from the appeal go?
Donations made to the Scotland on Sunday Christmas Appeal will be spent wherever the need is greatest. Sightsavers works in over 30 developing countries throughout Africa, Asia and the Caribbean.
How much of the money raised by Sightsavers goes towards the projects it supports?
In 2006, 71.1% of expenditure went towards projects, which equated to £17.69m. The remaining money was spent on generating funds to support our work in the future and governance costs. For more information please see our 2006 Annual Review on our website.
What governance does Sightsavers have in place to ensure that monies raised from the appeal actually reach the people they are meant to help?
Sightsavers works with local partner organisations who are as equally passionate about our mission and values as we are. They have strong links into the community and are committed to ensuring that the money is spent in the most effective way to support the poorest in the community.
All our partners are happy to engage in careful financial monitoring, with comprehensive measures in place to track expenditure. Sightsavers partners submit regular reports and accounts and are visited regularly by our country office staff as well as an independent audit team.
How does Sightsavers work to treat Trachoma?
Sightsavers applies the WHO recommended SAFE strategy for combating trachoma - Surgery, Antibiotics, Face washing and Environment changes.
Sightsavers and its partners train community health workers to identify trachoma and also educate villagers on the signs of the infection. The antibiotic ointment, tetracycline, which costs just 50 pence a tube and is taken over a six week period, is effective in curing the disease and preventing the onset of trichiasis.
Where the disease has developed into trichiasis, following repeated infection and scarring of the cornea, surgery can prevent blindness by stopping the eyelashes from rubbing against the eyeball. This surgery is typically done at a community level by a specially trained health worker.
As well as training community health workers to identify trachoma, education amongst villagers plays a key role in prevention. Encouraging face and hand washing can help reduce transmission rates.
Lastly, to beat trachoma in the long term, communities are being encouraged to set up local sanitation committees to build latrines, separate their live stock from areas where people sleep, and ensure rubbish is collected and burnt regularly. This helps reduce the number of flies with which people come into contact with.
Is improving water sanitation for communities, like those featured in the appeal, an area Sightsavers has considered supporting?
To date, funds have largely been focused on projects that aim to reduce the prevalence rates of trachoma in communities, and to identify and operate on those suffering from trichiasis before their blindness becomes irreversible.
However Sightsavers is also working in conjunction with partners, such as WaterAid and local governments to support schemes that provide clean water and sanitation for communities, implementing a critical part of the SAFE strategy.
Killa Virkan, a small village in Punjab, Pakistan is one such community where this is taking place. As well as focusing on community education, and intensive training of community health workers, Sightsavers has worked with local partners and local government to improve village infrastructure. Providing clean filtered water, along with building latrines, paving roads etc has improved village sanitation. Due to the success of the changes, in virtually eradicating trachoma, the project is now being rolled out to six other villages in the area over the next few months.
Does Sightsavers accept the donation of used spectacles?
Sightsavers policy is not to collect and send second-hand glasses to developing countries but instead to fund the local production of glasses which are then used as an income generating scheme for our local partners, providing high quality glasses at a small cost. In our experience, using second glasses also incurs costs. The glasses have to be cleaned and measured to find out what strength they are and shipped over to the relevant country.
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