The Rotary Club of Bloxwich Phoenix

During these few days after Christmas we’re mentioning three London Marathon runners. The other two are running the 2012 race, but Jonathan successfully completed the 2011 event along with Dominic Jefferies and David Roseblade.

He chose to run the event to raise funds for the Shaw Trust, a national charity which supports disabled and disadvantaged people to prepare for work, find jobs and live more independently.

Each year they work with over 75,000 clients who face barriers due to disability, ill health or social circumstance. Thousands of employers and public sector organisations also benefit from their range of services for business, and they are one of the Government’s lead partners in the delivery of employment programmes for disabled and disadvantaged people.

Jonathan, from Brownhills, raised £500 with this achievement, and you can add to that by donating directly to the Shaw Trust via his JustGiving page.

The Rotary Club of Bloxwich Phoenix is making small donations to each of the causes highlighted in our 12 Days of Christmas series, of which this is the sixth.

When we think of fundraising efforts and sponsored events there are a number of events that spring to mind, but this one was a new one!

Sarah and her friend Amanda decided to avoid the ‘usual’ fayre and went instead for a sponsored ‘fright night’. They stayed at Alton Towers’ Fright Night on the night of April 8 and raised funds for the Anthony Nolan Trust.

Sarah details this on her JustGiving page… “There has been confirmed paranormal activities and sightings in this House on a few occasions, and during the evening we will be joined by TV’s “Most Haunted” program’s Ghost Hunters and Mediums to try to find something or just to spook us out of our wits basically. This is definitely not an easy challenge for either of us, some people may say this is a walk in the park, but for me that couldn’t be more wrong, I’m very easily spooked out and I have genuinely got really scared for the the most silly reasons…”

Anthony Nolan saves the lives of people with blood cancer. Every day they match remarkable donors willing to donate their blood stem cells to people who desperately need lifesaving transplants. The charity is now 35 years old and works endlessly to build a register of potential donors. They particularly need male volunteers in the 18-30 age group, so if you fall into that category you can volunteer here. Volunteering could save a life.

Another way to help is, of course, to donate. You can donate directly to the charity via her JustGiving page and clicking the Donate Now button.

John, from Cannock, has a whole series of successful fundraisers behind him, and is continuing this streak with the London Marathon in 2012. If he completes it, and there’s no reason to think he won’t, it will make a hat-trick of London Marathon finishes for him.

He will be running, as he has in the past, to raise awareness and funds for Lupus UK. LUPUS UK is the only national registered charity supporting people with systemic lupus and discoid lupus and assisting those approaching diagnosis.

Systemic lupus is a chronic and presently-incurable illness of the immune system, a condition in which the body’s defence mechanism begins to attack itself through an excess of antibodies in the blood stream causing inflammation and damage in the joints, muscles and other organs. There are estimated to be some 50,000 cases in the UK and 90% of sufferers are female, mainly between the ages of 15 and 55.

John’s website details some of his previous fundraising efforts as well as promoting the current ones, and from it you will see he’s a very dedicated and effective fundraiser for this cause, of which his sister Viki is a sufferer.

As of last night his JustGiving page for the London Marathon 2012 had exceeded his original target to reach £1,464.69, a fantastic achievement, and one which you could still add to via that page. And you can keep up to date with John and his efforts via his blog.

Alex completed the challenge of the Aspire Channel Swim early in December. The challenge was to swim the distance of the English Channel (22 miles) in your local swimming pool over a 12 week period and raise money for Aspire and people with spinal cord injuries.

1,200 people in the UK are paralysed each year as a result of spinal injury. The individuals affected will lose muscle and sensory control and the vast majority become full time wheelchair users for the rest of their lives. Historically, the majority of spinal cord injuries have been sustained by those aged 15 to 40, with men outnumbering women, although increasingly it is affecting older people too.

Through its projects and programmes, Aspire offers practical support to the 40,000 people living with a spinal cord injury in the UK so that they can lead fulfilled and independent lives in their homes, with their families, in work places and in leisure time.

Alex completed his challenge on December 4, with a final session of one and a quarter miles to make up the total required. He details his exploits on his blog which makes excellent reading. The challenge involved him going swimming 42 times over the event period, to complete the return journey challenge of 44 miles.

You can still donate online via his JustGiving page. As of last night Alex’s efforts have raised £128 for the charity – hopefully some of our readers may make it a little bit more.

Today we want to tell you about Mark Foster. He ran the 2011 Wolverhampton half marathon in memory of his sister Chelsea Gillian Courtney Clark to raise funds for the Young Minds Trust.

This is the UK’s leading charity committed to improving the emotional wellbeing and mental health of children and young people. Mental health is something many of us shy away from discussing, but the charity says 850,000 children and young people in the UK have a mental health problem – and that’s just the ones who have been diagnosed. They provide free advice and support for parents worried about their children’s behaviour, emotional problems and mental health, and also give expert knowledge and best practice advice for anyone working with children or young people.

It’s clear from reading the JustGiving page where donations can be made that Chelsea is sadly missed by her family and all who knew her. As of yesterday a total of £507 had been donated in her memory, and if you’d like to add to this, the page is still open for donations.

Ryan, another brother, wrote a song in memory of his sister which can be seen on YouTube.

To mark Christmas this year we wanted to highlight some of the great fundraising and work done by members of the public which usually goes unnoticed. So we decided that for each of the twelve days of Christmas we would pick somebody who has created a fund-raising page on JustGiving and bring it to your notice. At the same time we will be making a small donation to their chosen charity/cause. Some of these events will already have happened, while others are yet to come, but all of them show ordinary people doing extraordinary things for the benefit of others.

So, for our first day, Christmas Day itself, we have selected Sue Simkiss whose page was asking for support for the Hednesford Under 9′s Charity Football Tournament 2011 which took place on September 3. The event was raising funds for Cancer Research UK, one of the world’s leading charities dedicated to beating cancer through research. They are fighting cancer on all fronts, and finding new ways to prevent, diagnose and treat it to save more lives, and like many charities are entirely funded by the public.

The charity tournament took place at Yates Sports & Social Club, Pelsall, and up to yesterday the JustGiving page has raised a total of £128, some way below the target of £300.

If you’d like to support their chosen charity further, you can do so from their JustGiving page, or if you’d like to give to a specific area of research, or set up a regular donation, you can do so via the charity’s website.

After all of our Santa activities we had a chance for a break with a visit to Forest Arts Centre for their pantomime ‘The Snow Queen’.

Following the financial crisis, Iceland, where the Snow Queen lives, was looking to increase tourism, and needed the Snow Queen to support their initiatives. She didn’t want visitors, and so hatched a plot to make the ‘happiest boy in the world’, who happened to live in the nearest town, unhappy. Tourists would not want to come to a place where the happiest boy could be so unhappy, and the Snow Queen would have had her way.

Along the way we were treated to a very large number of Iceland (the store) jokes. The performers were all pretty good, though the sound levels, especially at the start, were a little awry. The main problem though was the script. When there were songs and dancing slots they were good, but they were few and far between, with very long sections of dialog to join the elements of the rather convoluted story together. The show, billed as starting at 1:30pm began about 10 minutes late, but didn’t finish until around 4:30pm. We had three toddlers with us, and their attention span certainly doesn’t last that long! It was a shame, because a shorter leaner version of the production would have been so much better.

This was the first time we’d been to a pantomime production here, and we’ve had excellent reviews in the past, so assume this was just an anomaly – we’ll let you know next year!

What can we say?

Despite the difficult economic climate our totals for this year’s Santa  Sleigh surpass those of 2010 and 2009. In total this year we raised a total of £1,784.78, over £100 more than in 2009, which is just magnificent.

Over the course of our six nights, around 14 hours of Santa, we’ve visited around 4,500 homes around Bloxwich, and seen hundred of children and their families, and we’ve loved every minute of it.

We also delivered 101 personalised letters from Father Christmas to children, with fantastic results. We started this scheme last year, but this year we’ve had about a four fold increase in demand. From the feedback we’ve had we know how much these are appreciated, so thank you to everyone for letting us know.

As we go around the Santa routes we get a mostly excellent reception. We do get asked a lot of questions, and so here are some answers to those most commonly asked.

The donations you all make to us are given directly to our Rotary Foundation UK charity, with no expenses taken from the proceeds. All of our volunteers give up their time for nothing. The sweets we give out are paid for by contributions throughout the year from our club members and donations made by them. The letters were printed and materials donated by one of our members.

In total this year we’ve had over 20 different helpers over the six nights, including a number who are not members of our Rotary Club  but who responded to a request for help when we realised we were short handed for some of the routes. It really has been a fantastic response from them, and we’re very thankful to them for making it possible.

Over the six routes we’ve collected over 15,000 coins, including over 5,000 pennies – so you can see every donation, however small, really does make a difference. So, once again, a bit thank you from us, the Rotary Club of Bloxwich Phoenix, to you, the public of Bloxwich, for your support over the course of our six nights. We hope that you all have a fantastic Christmas in 2011 and that 2012 is a brilliant year for us all!

Well, our final route for 2011 was Turnberry. We’d had to cancel this one last year when the snow finally got the better of us, so it was great to be back and able to do the route. The rain appeared at the start, but cleared fairly early on leaving us with a cold but mostly dry route.

Non-Rotary volunteers this time around included Terry (chairman of the Bloxwich Carnival committee, again), and Dan and Beth, neighbours of one of our members. We’re extremely grateful to all of them and all of our volunteers over the last week and a bit.

We collected a fantastic total of £480.63 on the night, so once again very big thanks to everyone who supported us. We hope you enjoyed seeing Santa on his visit.

That’s it for this year for us, we hope you all enjoyed seeing us, as we certainly enjoyed meeting you.

Our penultimate route for 2011 was Lower Farm on Friday 16 December. We were once again very lucky to have a number of external volunteers to help us. This time around we had Emma, chair of the Bloxwich Business Partnership and manager of Co-Op Travel in Bloxwich, with two of her staff members Leah and Dawn, along with returning volunteers Julie (local councilor) and Terry (chairman of the Bloxwich Carnival committee). As usual we’re extremely grateful to all of them.

The night was again dry for us. We collected a very respectable total of £214.21 on the night, so big thanks to everyone who supported us. We hope you enjoyed seeing Santa on his visit.

Our next route will be Turnberry on Saturday 17 December, where we start at the earlier time of 4:30pm. If you’re in the area please come and see us.

Whilst we travelled it was possible to track us online here (from a PC) or here (from a mobile device), and this service will be active for our other routes too. It’s a great way to reduce the amount of time you might otherwise spend outside in the cold.

If you’ve requested a letter from Santa for our final route please let one of our collectors know as we pass and we’ll make sure we get your letter(s) to their intended recipients.

Finally, another big thank you, this time to Stuart Williams of the Bloxwich Telegraph, who came out to take some photos of us, one of which we have used above. Your help and promotional support has been very much appreciated.