At Look Ahead, we are always grateful for the generosity of everyone who supports us. This can certainly be said about our friends over at the design consultancy chapmanbdsp, who have supported us as one of their charities of the year for the last two years running.
Staff at the firm have fundraised for Look Ahead in a range of ways, for example, holding a Wear it Green Day for us during Mental Health Awareness Week. We are grateful to the team at chapmanbdsp for all their support and would like to give a special mention to two of their staff who quite literally went the extra mile for Look Ahead.
Dave Honey and George Fall braved a gruelling 100km walk up the Thames, known as the Thames Path Ultra Challenge, starting at Putney Bridge in London and ending in Henley-on-Thames in Oxfordshire. As a result of the walk, the pair ended up raising an incredible £1745 for Look Ahead, £545 more than their original target of £1200.
At Look Ahead we believe that great efforts like this should be celebrated and recognised, so we sat down with Dave and George to find out more about the challenge, and why they decided to take it on.
Dave Honey (Associate Public Health Engineer) said:
George and I both regularly walk 5km to work, and we were inspired by some of our colleagues who arranged a 10km night walk for Look Ahead before; we wanted to do something similar. After a while we started goading each other about the Thames Path Ultra Challenge and decided to go for it. We put the suggestion to our colleagues, who encouraged us to raise money for Look Ahead in the process, after all, we wouldn’t have wanted to just walk all that way for the sake of it without helping a good cause. We really value giving back at chapmanbdsp.
The walk itself was a huge challenge, I had already walked 50km before for practice, that left my feet in bits, but I had a good idea of what I was “walking into” you might say. The Ultra Challenge took just over 23 hours, and as you might expect, had both high and low points. There were times when we were pretty much stumbling through fields in the darkness, but I have to say, seeing Windsor lit up at night was spectacular, the full English breakfast at the end wasn’t bad either.
George Fall (Apprentice Public Health Engineer) said:
The walk was a physical test like no other! About halfway through, I really regretted not having put in more training. Thankfully, I managed to get a quick massage along the way to keep me going! On the whole though, I’m really proud of the distance we managed to cover and the amount of time we completed the challenge in.
That sense of achievement over breakfast was a great feeling. It was also so amazing to see the donations come flying in, we got over 70! Our friends, family, colleagues, contractors, and other business partners of ours all chipped in. It was absolutely fantastic to raise so much more than we had first planned, we got 45% more than our original target!
Once again, all of us here at Look Ahead would like to say a huge thank you to Dave and George, and the whole team at chapmandbdsp for all they do to support our work.
If you or your company would like to support us through a fundraising challenge or another activity, we’d love to hear from you. Please email [email protected]
