Some years ago, YouthNet was given hundreds of cuddly Octopi as a ‘gift in kind’ at an under the sea themed fundraising ball. At the time we were quite overwhelmed by the little critters and not really sure how we were going to use them. Luckily for us, the lovely people in our online community at TheSite.org had their own ideas for them when we started giving them out as prizes for ‘Post of the week’ on the forums. Tons of images of Octi photographed in weird and wonderful places populated our message boards.
Quite a few years have passed and we seem to still have a couple of boxes of these limited edition purple friends knocking about the office. We tend to send a couple out each week and still see excitement from the recipients either through private messages to us or through photos on the boards.
Just this week one of our youngest members posted a cute photo story, so I thought I’d share an excerpt with you:
Hello, this is Octi’s story while he was at my house. I arrived at Abi’s house on May 19, exactly on her birthday, wow what a coincidence, I also arrived with TheSite.org T-shirt she always wheres when going to bed, I’m sure it’s not a PJ top, but oh well! I was at Abi’s house, in a small package waiting to be opened, she arrived home after 4:30, she was at Rounders, I was thankful she came home quick!! When she opened me I had learn to read quickly, I love reading the first book I read was “The Glass Demon”
Maybe in my next post, I’ll give you a short ‘History of Octi’ to let you know the other ways he’s helped spread the message of YouthNet not just in the UK but also around the world!
