A St Albans woman has raised more than £1,000 for two charities - the Sopwell Community Trust and St Albans and District Foodbank - with her online Valentine's Day quiz.
Mum-of-three Claire Thrift decided to hold the live Facebook quiz after feeling "useless" in lockdown. She said: "It was good fun!
"Me and my friends had just had it with Zoom calls, and, between us, we wanted to do something that injected a bit more fun into the usual Zoom calls and quizzes that we'd been doing.
"We wanted to do it on a larger scale, and also, we were just feeling useless because there wasn't really a way of helping people in the community other than physically going and seeing people, which we obviously can't do. The idea came from that, to do something to link the community together."
Claire, along with her husband Richard, created a wacky and engaging trailer to promote the quiz using their home studio, combining the family's love of dressing up and video-making to raise money for local causes and lift the community's spirits.
"Valentine's Day is a time of year anyway that people feel lonely and it can be isolating enough, even when it's not during a pandemic, so we thought let's do it on that day. Valentine's Day was going to suck really badly, so it all came together like that, really."
Claire continued to applaud the work of the Sopwell Community Trust, who have been delivering cakes to the elderly since last March, and cited the charity as one of the reasons why she chose to put on the quiz and raise the all-important money.
She also wanted to share the money raised with St Albans and District Foodbank.
"We were aiming at £300, and then we sold that many tickets in the first week.
"I was very surprised that people picked up on it and wanted to do it. We charged only £3 a ticket, and that meant that anybody could take part."
Participants - who hailed from across the UK as well as Norway and France - could also add on a donation when buying tickets, supporting the tight community spirit of St Albans.
"They were all saying how nice it is that we have such a close-knit community. That's what it was all about, really - highlighting the community. I think that's really come to the forefront during the pandemic; people really do step up here and they care about making sure that everybody is being looked after."
Claire hopes to conduct more online quizzes in future.
To retrospectively take part in Claire's quiz, click here. You can continue to make donations to the Sopwell Community Trust and St Albans and District Food Bank directly through the respective charities.
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