How do I make it so...

I have a scenario early in my game where three boys have stolen this little girl's ribbons, and the player's job is to retrieve all three of them. How would I go about doing this since you can only have one item and two switches as proof of the event?

Also, how would I make it so I can have the player donate money to a person and once they've donated enough an event happens?

It looks like the best bet for both situations would be using variables and then have a conditional branch once the appropriate value has been reached.
I beleive that Debulex(?) has produced some tutorials on variables.
I can only do simple stuff with them myself X_X