Would you like to join a Tommy's fundraising group?

Do you live in or nearby St Helens in Merseyside, Leeds or Bradford in West Yorkshire, or Deal in Kent? If so these groups would love you to contact them and help organise a variety of fun fundraising events or just promote Tommy's in the local area.

St Helens email Caroline at malibu@princessa99.freeserve.co.uk
Bradford email Elaine at riolaw@freeuk.com
Leeds email Sharon at dsu@supanet.com
Deal call Duncan on 01304 372 407

Or call Diana on 020 7398 3431

A big well done and thank you to:

• Hannah Brookes and Zoe Button who did a most unusual fundraising challenge - they spent 48 hours in Zoe's car in June!

With just 4 toilet breaks, eating and sleeping in the car wherever it took them they raised over £130. This was the second Tommy's fundraising event for the girls - they also did a sponsored 24 hour fast back in February raising another £130. Thanks girls for all your support!



• Brighouse Ladies Circle, who bravely abseiled in the snow in February to raise funds for Tommy's.

It was an awful day and they were all terrified but they all rose to the challenge and successfully abseiled to rasie £1,190. Here they are looking very apprehensive!



• Jon Barnett and 5 of his colleagues from the British Army based in Northern Ireland, who walked the distance of the Morne Mountains and raised £800 for Tommy's.

On 26th May the intrepid soldiers set off to cover the demanding 22 mile walk, climbing from sea level to 850 metres. Thanks to their Commanding Officer, Mr S Dorset who kindly gave his permission for the walk to take place.



• Natasha Murphy who ran a 'guess the name of the teddy competition'

Here's a picture of Natasha, aged 13, with Charity the bear who helped raise £85 for Tommy's.



• Brave Donna Jenkins' tandem skydive for Tommy's

Brave Donna Jenkins did a tandem skydive for Tommy's on 26th June. She contacted her local paper, the Northants News, who printed this piece all about why she chose to support Tommy's. She said "It was the most fantastic experience and since the jump I have decided to continue parachuting as a hobby and would like to thank Tommy's for giving me a reason to actually jump out of the plane." If you fancy doing a parachute jump call Diana on 020 7398 3431 or visit our Challenges page, under Supporting Tommy's.


Click on the image above for a larger version of the Northants News article.

• Employees from BAE Systems at Samlesbury have shown their bottle and raised £500 for Tommy’s

The money has been raised thanks to the idea of Chris Leach from the Machining Centre at Samlesbury who came up with the idea of having Charity Challenge water bottles made to sell across the site. Having produced an initial design to take into account new water dispensers on the Samlesbury site, Chris liased with a local supplier to have the bottles manufactured.

Julie McGeoch, Charity Challenge co-ordinator at BAE Systems, Samlesbury said: ‘Chris has come up with a innovative idea to help raise money for such a worthy cause, and put a huge amount of effort into ensuring this was a success.’

Chris added: ‘The bottles have proved to be more successful than I could imagine and we’ve sold over 500 and they are still going!

‘Doing the design and organising the production was more complicated than I initially imagined, but to have raised so much for such a worthwhile cause, made all the effort worthwhile.’

• Brian Sprackling, Over £2000 for a haircut!!!
  
Regulars and visitors to the Barley Mow in Winchfield raised over £2000 to see the landlord, Brian Sprackling, have all his hair cut off on Easter Saturday. Brian had 2 years of growth and it was suggested that he raise money for a deserving charity by doing the deed. It didn't take too much convincing for Brian to agree so all that was left to do was select the charity. The Charity chosen was 'Tommy's the Baby Charity'. Brian said that he had close friends that had lost children during pregnancy plus the pub and regulars are supporters of the F1 McLaren Racing team - Ron Dennis being of course Tommy's co-chairman. The services of Richard Boxall, winner of the Italian Open Golf Championship and SKY sports TV presenter, were secured to cut Brian's hair. Along with this local celebrity and comedy magician John Star performed table-top and midair magic in the pub over the lunchtime to further swell the coffers of the Tommy's charity pot. At 3 pm Brian had all his hair taken off by regulars using scissors followed by a good scalping by Richard Boxall. Brian said that he was overwhelmed by the generosity of all the regulars and visitors to the pub to raise over £2000 for such a deserving cause.

  

• Mothercare Watford, Three Peaks Challenge
  
Mothercare, Watford, who completed their Three Peaks Challenge, and raised over £6,000 for Tommy's - thank you! They climbed highest mountains in England, Scotland and Wales - Scafell Pike, Ben Nevis and Snowdon in 24 hours. Starting at 9am on the Saturday morning they'd been up and down Ben Nevis by midday! But various delays along the way meant it was 10pm by the time they started their ascent of their second peak, Scafell Pike. This meant climbing in the dark with only torches and the moonlight to show the way.



At 3am they were in place to do their final climb - Snowdon. To complete the challenge in 24 hours was now out of the question, but the team were determined to climb all 3 peaks - failure was not an option! This proved to be the most challenging of the peaks with little or no sleep since Friday night & a highly nutritious diet of bananas, chocolate, Baby Bels & crisps beginning to take its toll on energy levels.




The final summit. Just the journey down now!

In summary:

• we drove 1,204 miles
• we walked 30 kilometres
• we ascended 3.2 kilometres

& all in 29.5 hours!
• Southwark College Christmas Pottery Sale
  
The Entry Level Art and Design students at Southwark College raised £130 for Tommy's in December. The students, aged from 15-17, a number of whom have behavioural and learning difficulties raised the money by designing and makign ceramics and selling them to staff and students at the Christmas Pottery Sale. The students could have kept the money to help fund a college trip but very kindly decided to donate the money to Tommy's - a charity they chose to support.

Thank you to all of them!

  

• Great North Run September 2004
  
Tommy's had over 15 runners taking part in this year's 13 mile north east run. Caroline Hollinshead has run the Great North Run for the last 7 years for Tommy's, but this year was different. She slipped two discs at the beginning of the year and is still waiting for an operation. So her husband and daughter pushed her in a wheelchair all the way round! Her brother John came up form London for his 6th run for Tommy's. Caroline has been fundraising for Tommy's for over 6 years now and the Great North Run is one of her favourite fundraising activties! Pictured are Caroline & family, plus younger family members who took part in the Mini and Junior Great North Runs.

  

2-year-old Aimee and her granddad completed the Great North Run Toddlers Mile and raised £122 for Tommy's. Although Aimee came in last she enjoyed every minute of it!



• Oliver's Trail
  Caroline Rhoerig gathered over 130 family members, friends and colleagues to walk through Richmond Park on 21st August 2004, in memory of baby boy Oliver. They raised over £5,000 for Tommy's and all enjoyed a picnic lunch at the end of the day. Caroline's employers Salterbaxter Design were very supportive and now 6 staff members are running the London Marathon for Tommy's next year!

    

  
  
  
• St Christopher's School, Beckenham in Kent raised £1,455 for Tommy's last academic year with their weekly penny collection and other activities. Their teacher Mrs Bradley gave birth to Tabitha at just 25 weeks in April 2003. Tabitha weighed just over 1lb and was kept at St Thomas' Hospital for over 4 months. Here she is pictured with mum and Tommy's Community Fundraiser Diana.

  

• Derwent Walk for Ciaran. On 16th July Aden Kelly and his father-in-law Stuart walked 10 miles from Consett to Gateshead in memory of baby Ciaran who was stillborn on 16th July 2003. Together they raised £1,278.50 in sponsorship and plan to do the walk again.

  

• Horsell Village Traders Fair on Saturday 24th July raised £1,100 for Tommy's. Lock Shop owner Roy Puttock helped organised the day, which was a tremendous success.
  
  "A little earlier in the year my partner Tracy and I were excitedly expecting a new addition to the family," says Roy, "but we were devastated when we lost our baby at around 20 weeks due to a rare genetic disorder. We were introduced to Tommy's as Tracy's boss is Sally Tennant, joint chair of the trustees of Tommy's. We contacted Tommy's to find answers to our questions and found a great deal of help and support was available to us."
  
  The village had a number of activities including 'Pimms O'Clock at the Lock Shop' run by heavily pregnant barmaid Tracy! Tracy has since given birth to a baby girl.

A huge THANK YOU to everyone else who has been fundraising for Tommy's. Your support for the charity is overwhelming and we really couldn't survive without you!

If you would like to organise an event no matter how big or small to raise funds for Tommy's then we are here to help! We can give you the fundraising materials and advice you need to make your event a great success! Just call Diana on 08707 70 70 70 or email dstenning@tommys.org