Charity work

As I finalise my total money raised from my John O'Groats to Lands end cycle which is to be split between Oliver & his family along with Pumping Marvellous who have been such a huge part of my heart journey.  I have taken time to reflect on what I learned about raising money for charities & charity work in general.

Looking back I wish I had only raised money for either pumping Marvellous or Oliver & his family to send them on a holiday. Now after expenses We should have around £600 for each. It would have made it easier if I used Justgiving for one cause & not Gofundme as I ended up raising over £1400 for expenses especially hotels & fuel from mainly Barclay medical practice so in total I raised over £3000. Not bad considering I announced it 3 weeks before but will never do it that way again.

So as I look forward I have taken decision to continue raising money for Oliver with my final event for him being the great Scottish swim where I will swim 5k in Loch Lomand, hopefully before that I can have bag pack at work and maybe some other fundraisers.

However I realise that I don't do as much charity work as I should. Not because I don't want to but is strange having a chronic illness and being able to raise awareness of it by continuing working & physical achievements that actually leaves little time to be more active within a charity.

On Monday at work I thanked my fellow managers for support and singled out Jayne for her effort, she sat quietly behind me saying nothing. I asked Jayne today how much she had raised as store charity person and she had no idea but i tell you a lot more than I have for mine.

Julie from cardiomyopathUk posted this week about a local child minding charity her family had supported for 20 yrs that had been took over so the elderly founders surprised her with donation to her choice charity because of that superb support.

Sam at Pumping Marvellous who no doubt will tell me off for writing this but I see how heart failure effects her but she still drives herself to produce awesome images for awareness including my End2End stuff.

What these 3 have in common is they do charity not for Ego, publicity or because they want something back, they do it because they care for people.i am so amazed at their efforts not only to do what they do but be so shy about being thanked for doing it.

I so get the joke now "don't like to talk about my charity work" because so many & probably large majority do but In my opinion do it for something other than kindness. I might even count myself in this if being honest.

So I joined community charity group at work, I will do small traditional events to raise money for Oliver with Jayne's input no doubt Hopefully my exploits open new contacts to promote these events.

I still want more to know that heart failure isn't the end, I want to contact & collate more stories from around the world who show & back that belief up. I am inspired by them & others so I just want to give something back but not from the front because Lorna & my life doesn't need it or could cope with it but we care for others but not in the way Jayne, Julie & Sam above do, I definitely am too selfish.

So finally  I like doing charity work & will continue but I don't like to talk about it.