Jump 4 Joe – 24th April 2010 - the eagle has landed! UPDATE and PICTURES below...
Dear All,
As many of you know already, last year my wife Marie and I suffered a huge loss when our son Joe was born sleeping on the 19
th July 2009. Joe was almost 30 weeks old and weighed 2lb 13oz. As beautiful and perfect as Joe clearly was he was born too soon. On average, 17 families suffer this loss every day in the UK. On that day, we were one of those 17.
Marie and I feel an overwhelming need to try and do something in our lives that would make this little boy proud of his parents. We have decided to help raise money and awareness for the charity SANDS, who provide help and support for bereaved parents affected by the loss of a baby.
The first thing we did was to set up a JustGiving page in honor of our son (
http://www.justgiving.com/JoeDonn) and to date we have raised over £1,000 for the national SANDS campaign. We are also now members of our local SANDS group hoping to raise money for a sound-proofed room at our local hospital and other vital support projects for parents in our sad situation.
Now I have booked myself a Tandem Skydive to help raise what we hope will be the final bit of money needed to enable work on these local projects specifically, over and above the money we are raising for the national campaigns.
I have now set up this new fundraising page specifically for my up and coming Skydive on 17th April and I hope you can find a small or even a large amount to help me raise the money needed for this great cause. I hope to have some photos and video after the jump which I’ll share so you too can enjoy the expressions of a man leaping out of a plane at 10,000 feet!
If you are able to donate please press the button!
SANDS has a nationwide network of local support groups run by bereaved parents to support anyone affected by the loss of a baby. Our local group Havering is part of this network and 100% of your donations will be used to support their work. It is also the most efficient way to donate: SANDS will receive your money electronically and, if you are a UK taxpayer, an extra 28% in Gift Aid will be added to your donation at no cost to you. The Gift Aid is used to support SANDS’ work at a national level.
Donating through JustGiving is simple, fast and totally secure. Your details are safe with JustGiving – they’ll never sell them on or send unwanted emails. Once you donate, they’ll send your money directly to the charity and make sure Gift Aid is reclaimed on every eligible donation by a UK taxpayer.
Thank you to all who have supported us so far, Marie and I appreciate it more than words can say.
Many, many thanks in advance.
Gavin
For more information on Tandem Skydive go to: http://www.skylineparachuting.co.uk/tandem-skydives.aspx
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Update - 17th April 2010
Firstly, thank you all so very much for your kind donations. We continue to be completely blown away by everyone’s generosity and can’t begin thank everyone enough for the support you have given me by contributing towards this very important goal of mine.
As I'm sure most of you will be aware by now, British airspace has been closed due to the volcanic ash plume from Iceland. As a result, my planned Tandem Skydive in Kent , which I was due to do today, has now been postponed. The good news is that I have already re-booked to do my jump next Saturday (24th April 2010).
Hopefully all being well I will be able to jump next week and of course I will then update this page again with details of how it went.
If you are in the Kent area next week, remember to look up into the skies for a silly person jumping out of a perfectly good plane.
Thanks again, Gavin
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Update - 24th April 2010
Gavin's flight report to follow... in the meantime, watch the video (above) and view the photos here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/41371134@N04/sets/72157623930074576/
