At the start of this year, we pledged to raise money for Great Ormond Street Hospital, a specialist children's hospital. This August and September, we challenged ourselves to go 10,000 miles to raise money for them, and we did it!
On our Annual Team Day in January 2020, we heard from guest speaker Anthony Bennett, who fell dangerously ill when he was a child and was miraculously saved by Great Ormond Street Hospital (GOSH) in London.
His story inspired us to choose GOSH as our charity for this year, and ever since we've been raising money to help support the hospital.
Did you know that children travel from all over the UK and abroad to receive specialist care at GOSH, with over 600 patients coming through the doors every day? GOSH is just like a normal hospital in that it receives NHS funding, but the specialist parts of GOSH require it to fund over 100 million pounds every year to carry on its outstanding work in helping children and researching the diseases that affect them.
We want to be part of helping GOSH reach their goal this year. We've been raising awareness of GOSH through our articles and hosting a quiz night, but our biggest event has been travelling 10,000 miles for GOSH.
This August and September, all of the team at the Chesterton House companies have banded together to collectively walk, run, cycle, swim and row 10,000 miles.
Whether we were in Woodhouse Eaves, Cornwall, Greece or Romania, all of our team
have put the effort in to help us reach our goal, and we couldn't be prouder.
Take a look above at some of the images our team have taken over the past two months as they worked towards our goal.
Whilst we have been raising money for GOSH, the Challenge has also encouraged our team to make sure they're getting a breath of fresh air during the difficult months of going through the pandemic.
Inga in our Accountancy practice said: "The challenge helped me to get out of the house, as since I was in lockdown and working from home, I stopped exercising and barely left home. Being involved motivated me to start walking and cycling and explore the beautiful areas around town."
Likewise, Jane, who completed over 410 miles in total had to say: "The challenge has really helped my mental health as being out in the countryside and focusing on being present has made me appreciate my surroundings. I’m currently running between 20km and 35km a week now, and the GOSH challenge has added a further incentive for me!"
We've been promoting our challenge on BBC Radio Leicester, in the Loughborough Echo Newspaper and through our website and social media channels.
So far we have raised £3734 for GOSH and we're not finished yet! We'll be planning more events over the next few months. We're very appreciative of your contributions to our fundraising so far, but if you would like to donate or find out more, you can from our website here.
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