Furniture sold on auction to help children in Tanzania

Executive chairs, desks and other office furniture have been sold on auction. All proceeds have been donated to the World Diabetes Foundation, who will use the donation to help children with diabetes in Tanzania.

In September, the auction house ‘Lauritz.com’ started an online auction of elegant Danish designer furniture previously used by the Novo Nordisk executive management in the office headquarters in Denmark. At the end of the nine days of auction a total of 280,000 Danish kroner; which is about 42,000 US dollars, was reached. One desk alone was bought for 43,000 kroner (around 7,200 US dollars).

The auction will have a visable impact

”With a sum of this size, we can achieve a lot in Tanzania, and it will help many children with diabetes and not least their families,” says Leif Fenger Jensen, Managing Director of the World Diabetes Foundation. It is a sad fact that a child in Tanzania who has been diagnosed with type 1 diabetes will only survive for one year on average. With the money from the auction, the World Diabetes Foundation now has a greater opportunity to do something about this depressing statistic.

Good cause influenced the bidding

There was no shortage of bidders when the executive furniture was put on sale, and a number of items sold for sums that exceeded all expectations. Executive vice president in Novo Nordisk Lise Kingo says:”The sound objective of the auction undoubtedly helped to push up the prices.”

“The auction house established a special webpage to introduce the good cause of the auction, and in addition we used of a lot of internal communication channels to bring attention to the event,” says Rasmus Møller Sørensen, the employee at Novo Nordisk who arranged the auction.

Several approaches will benefit the children with diabetes

The general plan is to cooperate with the Tanzanian Diabetes Association to find a sustainable solution which will help children with diabetes to get insulin and strips for measuring blood sugar. The children and their families will also receive instruction in managing diabetes.

In the longer term, the plan is to hold camps where the children can spend time with other children in the same situation and at the same time receive intensive training in how they can live with diabetes. The World Diabetes Foundation hopes to start the project in the first half of 2006.

General information about the project