EUR 520,000 funds raised at the Christmas Trees Festival this year. Which was the most auctioned Christmas tree ?

The 2016 edition of the Christmas Trees Festival held by the Save the Children Romania NGO raised EUR 520,000 following the auction in Bucharest on Thursday night. The most auctioned Christmas tree was the one made by designer Catalin Botezatu and the ARC Metropolitan School, which also set an absolute record in the past 16^th editions, being knocked down for EUR 127,500.

The Christmas tree, named “The Crystal Town” was bought by Catena pharmacy chain.

The designers revealed that, starting Ernst Theodor Amadeus Hoffmann’s famous fairytale “The Nutcracker”, they wanted to recreate a small part of the magic world of the childhood and imagination, bringing to life a little Christmas tree from the Sweets Kingdom in Maria’s dream.

27 Christmas trees have been designed for the festival’s 2016 edition. All of them joined the silent option auction in a first stage, with 13 trees, awarded for the highest sums, eventually raced in the auction with call.

“The 16^th edition of the Christmas Trees Festival has a double goal: the one of raising money to help children in need- last year we managed to help 2,500 children- but also to reiterate this major issue which is the children’s access to quality education and to prevent the dropout. In Romania, the situation is pretty difficult, the dropout increased, 60,000 children dropped out school in only one year (…)” Save the Children executive manager Gabriela Alexandrescu told Agerpres.

One of the most sought Christmas trees was also the one made by designer Doina Levintza- “The Time Story”, purchased by Kaufland for EUR 37,500.

The auctioned Christmas trees were purchased as following: Lidl bought the Bonsai Art Christmas tree by Zenya Atelier & Joomay for EUR 10,000; Radu Octavian paid EUR 4,500 for the Hugs and Love Christmas Tree by Mihaela Glavan; IT businessman Marius Ivan paid EUR 12,000 for the Miracle of Knowledge Christmas tree by Mirela Bucovicean & Molecule F & architect Raluca Lazăr. Lucia Costea from SECOM bought Malvina Cservenschi’ Christmas tree, L’Étoile magique for EUR 5.000; Marius ivan also bought Stephan Pelger & Club Med’s Christmas tree, the Gratitude Column for EUR 5,500; Carrefour paid EUR 5,000 for Dhaniel Nora & Sephora’s “Memories and wishes” Christmas tree and another EUR 3,000 for Rita Mureșan’s — Angel Christmas tree (Accept Now God Eternal Love); Bigotti paid Iza Van Dee’s Christmas tree for EUR 3,000 de euro.

Save the Children organization was able to support 2,425 children this year due to the money raised at the 2015 festival. 705 children were included in the “Summer Kindergartens” programme, 210 children have been reinserted in “The second chance” programme, while 1,510 children benefited from support in the dropout prevention programme, “School after School”.

The NGO raised through the Christmas Trees Festival’s 15 editions around EUR 3.3 M that went helping 25,000 beneficiaries.