Category Archives: Fund Raising

A Christmas Update

December 12, 2015 by Peter · Leave a comment

We have a few bits of news so thought it would be a good idea to do a quick blog post to update our friends and followers on what has been happening.

  1. We are almost ready for the Santa visit on the 21st December, as usual Pete will be donning the Santa outfit and will be accompanied by his helpful elf Christian. It is amazing how quite a lot of kids are quite frightened of the 6′ 4″ santa but all love his elf! Thank you very much to our trustees Darren Bowler and Amy Hancox for ordering and wrapping the presents and for Hugh from Boy Meets Girl Photography, who is donating his time and skills for free on the day.
  2. Waitrose in Sevenoaks have The Christian Blandford Fund as one of their nominated charities. Please drop by and pop the green coin into the middle bin!
    The CBF at Waitrose

    Christian

    The CBF

    The CBF

     

    Jess

    Jess

  3. Christian wrote a lovely piece of music for a string quartet. As proud parents we hope you don’t mind us sharing it!

 

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Great News

November 14, 2015 by Peter · Leave a comment

We are thrilled to announce that Waitrose Sevenoaks have chosen The Christian Blandford Fund as one of their three charities for December’s Community Matters!! This is a scheme whereby at the end of your shop you are given a green token to place in a box of the charity you’d most like to support. At the end of the month Waitrose donates £1000 between the 3 charities, with the charity that has the most amount of green tokens getting the majority of the donation.

Please share this with your Sevenoaks friends and make sure the green tokens go in our bin!

Henry and Christian

Henry and Christian

Posted in Blog, Fund Raising, Things We've Done.

Kevin Britt – Night Rider!

March 22, 2015 by Peter · Leave a comment

Kevin Britt is doing the London night rider event  and raising money for The Christian Blandford Fund.

Blandford/Arthur get together

Kevin writes

The night rider event is a 100k 62 mile ride around London taking in 50 of London’s most famous site including the Olympic park, Tower Bridge, Canary Wharf, Piccadilly Circus, Trafalger Square, the Royal Opera House and the London Eye.

There are over 4000 riders raising funds for lots of different charities. There is a musical theme to this years ride and takes the ride past icon musical sites in London including 21b baker street and abbey road (the Beatles) plus the pub from Bridget Jones and the globe in borough market. There is a selfie competition on the night to show the fun side of the ride. The event is organised by classic tours and there are no closed roads so the ride takes place along side the London night traffic. Continue reading →

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Stagecoach – Medieval Market

March 18, 2015 by Peter · 1 Comment

Stage Coach

Christian used to love going to Stagecoach in Tonbridge, and I received this lovely email from Wendy who runs it…

I just wanted to get in touch to let you know that on our last day of term (28th March) our students will be having an informal Medieval Market for parents and friends. We would very much like to donate any money that the children make on the stalls to Christian’s charity. Continue reading →

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Claudia’s Christmas Market

November 23, 2014 by Claudia · Leave a comment

On November 20th Claudia opened the house to about 80 friends who came along to support The Christian Blandford Fund, and do a spot of Christmas shopping.

Coco Cuscino brought along beautiful bespoke cushions, soft furnishings and gifts,  Anahita displayed luscious smelling homemade beauty products and Phoenix had a table overflowing with gift wrap, cards, note books and much more.  Upstairs Ben & Lucy from The Square Salon were busy with manicures and hairstyles, Miss Captain and Little Captain had rails full of fashionable clothing for ladies and children, Ochre had some gorgeous cashmere, silk and wool tops, pashmina’s and scarves whilst Stella & Dot brought a bit of sparkle to the event with some stunning jewellery.  Cakes and nibbles were courtesy of Sara Hester from Tandem Catering and Top Table provided us with tea pots, cafetieres, milk jugs, cups, glasses, teaspoons and much more.

We raised a massive £2410 and more money is still coming in online.  Thank you to everyone who supported this event.

Many people bought raffle tickets that helped towards the final total. We thought Christian should pick the lucky winners…

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A great donation for a fabulous cause

September 23, 2014 by Peter · Leave a comment

Thank you to the fantastic Lancashire foundation who donated £3,400 to pay for an amazing piece of kit (http://www.accuvein.com/) that makes inserting cannulas (needles for blood) much less painful for children. We have bought four of these wonderful machines together with Samuel’s Charity.

Thank you to Adam King for putting The Christian Blandford Fund forward for this.

Martin, from Samuel’s charity, explained the need for these very well…

We are looking to buy two more infrared scanners that shows where veins are so injections are made first time, every time.This is huge. No one likes injections but it can take 2,3,4 or sometimes more attempts to find a vein, especially after weeks or months of treatment. This is not only painful but very distressing for many kids (and adults!). Some medicines make you more sensitive so an injection feels more like being stabbed than a ‘sharp scratch’. Very often prolonged medicine treatment like Chemotherapy does this. Not to mention the psychological impact of worrying about frequent and painful injections.Now, because of support and donations, we bought one of these amazing pieces of equipment, an Accuview. Being able to get the vein first time cuts down the amount of pain and upset hugely. But that’s not all. Small kids have small veins and often you have to ‘root around’ (a medical term, apparently!) to find the right position. The Accuview solves this – they can get in the vein first time and no rooting around, seriously reducing the pain down.I spoke to the nurses yesterday and they all loved the Accuview, even the most senior nurses were raving about it!

This one piece of equipment has already made many kids on the ward much happier, and their days will not be as overshadowed with the worry of painful, repeated attempts for injections.

This doesn’t just help the children, though. As a parent I hate to see my kids go through pain. It was one of the hardest things I have ever done asking Samuel to have repeated and painful procedures, knowing it would hurt, and not being able to take the pain away or protect him. With Accuview we can go some way to doing this and that means so much to me.

Each one costs a few thousand pounds so we still need help as we need two more of these amazing machines for the other childrens wards at St Georges Hospital.

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Sam Tanner – Bournemouth half marathon

October 6, 2013 by Peter · Leave a comment

Sam Tanner

Sam is Christian’s Aunty and is running a half Marathon at Bournemouth marathon festival for the Christian Blandford Fund.

Here she is with Christian the day after he was born. Like all the members of our large family, Sam was very supportive through Christian’s illness and we are very grateful that on top of that she is putting herself through a rigorous training schedule and 21km of pain for our charity!

Please support her below.

Please show give encouragement and support on Facebook here

If you can not see Virgin Money Giving page, here is a link to it

Sam with Christian

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Val’s Jump

October 20, 2012 by Peter · Leave a comment

Thank you very much to the (slightly crazy) Val Brand who jumped out of a plane for the Christian Blandford Fund. She raised over £750 which is an amazing achievement.

Here she is…

September 2012

Thank you to Ava and Ellis McNally who made some lovely bracelets to sell at school and raised nearly £100 for the Christian Blandford fund. They were great bracelets and you are lovely girls!

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Darren’s Iron Man

June 30, 2012 by Peter · Leave a comment

Darren Bowler, one of our trustees was once known as “the fat controller”. Amazingly, he is doing an incredible iron man event in Switzerland in a couple of weeks. It involves a 3.8k swim (in the lake with 2500 others) , 180km cycle (through the Alps) and finally he has to run a full marathon. He is doing this quite ridiculous event (which sounds to me like 12 hours of utter pain) all to Aid the Christian Blandford Fund.

Here he is with another Trustee Amy and Rachel from St George’s

Darren, Amy and Rachel

This is what Darren writes…

I’ve bored most of you before about my triathlons but this time the mid life lycra crisis has spiraled out of control !!! . On July 15th I’m attempting IRONMAN ZURICH . That’s a ridonkulus 3.8k swim (in the lake with 2500 other idiots!) , 180km cycle (apparently there are a few hills..ie the alps !) followed by the small matter of a marathon . My target is to complete it in 14 hours .
The good news is that I’m not asking for your hard earned cash to donate to some big charity where you are never really sure how/where your money is spent ….because I’m actually going to be spending the money myself ! . No not on a new spanking carbon bike . I am one of the trustees of the Christian Blandford fund and my focus has been spending the cash we have raised . The aim of the Christian Blandford fund is to improve the comfort of children and their families, particularly those affected by cancer, during prolonged stays in local NHS hospitals .


Over the last couple of years we have been able to make a real difference . A couple of months ago we saw the opening of a paediatric patients playground at St Georges hospital Tooting . The CBF contributed 30k to the cost of providing a real oasis for kids during their say in hospital . We have funded parents lounge , ultrasound machines to reduce the pain of frequent injections for kids , new sofabeds for parents who spend weeks…even months in hospital with there kids ,laptops and kindles for the kids to use ….the list goes on and on so please check out the site for all the details .

Please support me in my fundraising safe in the knowledge that every penny donated (we have NO costs) will be spent wisely and will make a real difference to kids and there parents during prolonged hospital visits .
Cheers,

Darren

The Virgin Money Giving page is here

Darren completed this grueling event in 14 hours ours, here is what he writes…

I just wanted to say a big thanks to each and every one of you for your support for my Ironman attempt on Sunday .

My day started at 7am with a gentle hour and a half swim . Then it got difficult ! …. The 7 1/2 hours on the bike was a
real slog . Hampered by rain ,wind and even hail, it was fair to say morale was fairly low at times . 180km later I was desperate
to get off the bike…. even if it did mean starting a marathon . I managed just over 2 hours for the first half but then ran out
of steam and finished the run in 4:45 . My target for completing the Ironman was 14 hours …..I finished in 14 hours and 40 seconds ! .

Your support and generosity helped keep me going on the day and thanks again from all of us at the Christian Blandford fund . So far
a staggering £12,500 has been raised . Mark my word every penny will be wisely spent ! .

All the very best Darren

Please feel free to give Darren encouragement with Facebook Comments here and like this page on facebook.

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November 2011

November 23, 2011 by Peter · Leave a comment

23rd November 2011

Thank you to Sam Palmer and the Sevenoaks ladies joggers for donating £180 to the Christian Blandford Fund after they all ran the Brighton 10k and had a celebratory curry with Claudia. With gift aid, their donation is worth over £250.

20th November 2011

Congratulations to Claudia for raising over £2000 for the Christian Blandford fund and running the Brighton 10k in 1hr and 1 minute!

Posted in Blog, Fund Raising. Tagged with , , .
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