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Inspirational people raising funds during lockdown

Fi – Running 48 10km runs in her 48th year for YPWD in California

To combat an occasional lack of motivation my husband and I came up with the idea of me running 48 10k’s before my 48th birthday in October! I had about 37 weeks to achieve this and started my challenge before COVID-19 and lockdown came into place. This meant I was working from home and had more time on my hands. Therefore, I started to run 10k twice a week, getting out by 6am, then I was doing it three times a week and finally every other day. 

Further motivation came when I decided I wanted to support a charity. Without a question I knew I had to choose YPWD. The charity was co-founded by my father-in-law, Peter Watson, back in 2012. Sadly, in 2006 my mother-in law, Brenda Watson, had been diagnosed with vascular dementia at 59 years of age. I know YPWD does great work supporting families affected by young onset dementia and as a local charity can do with all the support it can get, particularly in these difficult times.

Before I knew it, I was nearly at my target of 48 10k runs by May, and my husband kindly donned his running gear too to run my final 10k with me.

You can still support Fi here

Tom – cycling 100 miles to help increase support for those with Young Onset Dementia

Tom Atkinson is an 11-year-old on a mission. He set himself a challenge to cycle 100 miles in aid of a family friend living with Young Onset Dementia. Tom wanted to raise public awareness and funds to help to provide more support. The great news is that Tom doubled his fundraising target thanks to the generous people living across Berkshire.

One of Tom’s biggest supporters, his mum Caroline, says “I’ve been impressed with how determined Tom has been to take on and complete this challenge.  We’ve seen the impact of young onset dementia and it’s been a real eye opener especially in terms of how a lot of the dementia support available isn’t set up for the needs of families with young children.”

Tom split his 100-mile challenge, which is the equivalent of cycling from the YPWD office to St Albans and back, over several days, totting up the total as he achieved each milestone. Tom explains his reason for setting himself this challenge, “I want to support this charity because a friend’s dad has young onset dementia and there isn’t much support available for young people and their families as there should be.”

You can still support Tom here

Katie and her colleagues run a marathon during the hottest week

A few weeks before lockdown a representative from the interns team at Hewlett Packard confirmed that YPWD would be their charity of the year for 2020 and that they’d be doing all they could, through participating in challenges at HQ, and at pre-organised events to raise awareness and funds for the charity.

And then lockdown happened….

However, all was not lost and Katie Easter, one of the interns at Hewlett Packard, made the decision to use some of the time working from home to take on a challenge in aid of YPWD.  Between herself and seven colleagues they decided to run a marathon across one work week.

The good news is that Katie and her colleagues achieved their goal, the challenge was that they had made the decision to do their running during the hottest week of the year so far! However, with lots of hydration they overcame the heat.

Hewlett Packard has also committed to match whatever the running team managed to raise.  

You can still support Katie and the team here 

Thank you to Fi, Tom and Katie


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