Jacob Jarvis

The story

A mum has defended her decision to charge for children to attend her twin sons’ birthday party after a parent questioned the fee.

Ruma Ali, 29, is a single mother of two boys who are turning five on Thursday, February 8.

She is hosting a party for the twins, Shiyan and Kiyan, and invited 60 of their classmates from a school in Evington, Leicester.

The event will be at Fun Valley, also in Evington, on the Sunday after their birthday, February 11, and Ms Ali has asked for parents to contribute £6 per child to the costs.

One parent posted anonymously in a Facebook community group and said: “My 4yr old has been invited to a classmates 5th bday party.

“The said parent has hired fun valley and stipulated a payment of £6 per child on the birthday invitations.

“My older kids are in secondary school and in all my years of hosting and being invited to kids parties, I have never been asked to pay for attending a party.

“Is this the done thing nowadays?”

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How I got the story

While searching for leads, I came across a post on a Facebook community group where a parent explained they were being asked to pay for their child to go to a school friend’s birthday party.

Straight away, I spotted a talking point. I kept an eye on the post and pondered how to develop it. The person had sent the message in to be posted anonymously so it was going to be hard to track them down. Within a few hours, the woman who was charging for the party, Ruma Ali, decided to write a message defending herself.

I messaged her, got her number, had a chat and got a story together.

It did great for the Mercury site, was syndicated for use in print by Metro, The Sun and Daily Mail.

This Morning contacted me and we coordinated that Ms Ali appear on there too and websites did follow up stories based on this TV segment.

The story has since spread to news sites in New Zealand, where it was also discussed on TV, Germany, Russia and China, where it has been translated into the relevant languages.

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