Each year, Liverpool Medical Students Society (LMSS) puts together a series of fundraising activities to help raise money and awareness for their chosen charities.
This year, LMSS Charity Reps Hannah Meredith, Reuben Veysey-Smith and Ioan Wardhaugh chose to support Wirral Mind (link) and Kind Liverpool (link). Final Year Student Doctor Ioan Wardhaugh shares what the events have meant to the student and local community, as well as him personally.
"We have had the privilege of being the LMSS’s charity reps helping raise money for Wirral Mind and Kind Liverpool. Supporting these charities has been absolutely amazing, and seeing where our money has gone to support local children and local people’s mental health has been really rewarding.
We have had an absolute blast fundraising this year and wanted to give a rundown of our highlights! A massive thank you goes out to everyone who has supported our charities this year, from people who donated to celebrity dancers to our cyclists and walkers.
Your efforts have really gone to make a difference across the community we call our uni home!
Back in September, a team of 52 students completed a walking challenge in Eryri (Snowdonia National Park) that included the Glyders and Carneddau ranges of mountains. This was a long tough day of walking, but the views made it all worthwhile! We raised an amazing £6,258 for our charities from this challenge!
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Throughout the year we have held charity raffles at LMSS events with prizes up for grabs ranging from vouchers to spend in local businesses, to a cardboard cut-out of David Attenborough and a weekend away in Budapest. Through these we have raised £2,859!
In February, the LMSS and Artefacts took over St George’s Hall (before Eurovision even got a look in!) for our annual Charity Strictly Come Dancing. This saw a live band of performers from Artefacts accompany six professional dancers and their celebrity couples who battled it out for your votes!
Thanks to our expert judging panel, including some familiar faces, the audience were guided to crown Anish (Year 3) and Bethany (Year 5) Strictly Come Dancing champions.
A massive shout out to Artefacts leads Mimi Al-Sadoon, Liv Heron and Katie Maxwell for their help with this event, as well as all the band and dancers that took part! We raised £2,068.70 for our charities.
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Our final event of the year was a SEA2SEA cycle challenge which saw a team of 17 students cycle from the North Sea at Hull to the Irish Sea back here in Liverpool.
Over two days we completed 235km of cycling as well as climbing over (hard!) and coming back down (fun!) the Peak District.
We were welcomed back to Liverpool by a crowd of supporters, and the knowledge that we had completed an incredible challenge and raised loads of money for our charities made it all worthwhile.
So far, we have raised just over £4000 from the cycle, and our JustGiving page (link) is open until the middle of May. If you have anything to spare, it will be so gratefully received by our charities who are making a real difference in the Merseyside area.
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On top of this, we have coordinated foodbank collections and were able to see how the money we raised for Kind contributed to their Christmas Appeal.
Thanks to your support this year we are currently at £15,868.28 for our charities!
Next academic year, Aidan and Conor will be in charge of fundraising and we know they’re going to absolutely smash it! Follow @LMSSCharities on social media to keep up to date and keep an eye on the student bulletin!”