After a brief meeting of many Pikes (from four unrelated families), we have joined forces to form a mighty 'Pikey' fundraising team for the Clock Tower Sanctuary (who provide essential services to young homeless people in Brighton)! 

One, Jon, is our elite athlete (a sub 3 hour man) who is only allowed to do the marathon after having done 2 hours of bike turbo training first! And he will still win the "Don't tell him your name Pike" category award!

His daughter, Imogen, will be tearing up the mini mile, while Dad is sweating on the turbo. 

Alan, is a barefoot, wannabe sub 4 hour, marathon junkie. His brother Richard is a wannabe marathon finisher and, 

Geoff, from the third Pike family, aims to finish with a smile on his face, unlike last time, 5 years ago. We even have another Geoff Pike from yet another Pike family but he decided that running a marathon was 26.1 miles too far!  

Now on to the more serious business...

From personal experience we can honestly say few charities deliver more bang for their buck than the Clock Tower Sanctuary, providing essential day care services for young homeless people in Brighton aged 16-25. For a young person on the point of making the transition to adulthood, homelessness is a particularly disruptive and frightening experience. The Sanctuary aims to capture young people early on in crisis and support them to move onto a positive path and away from long-term homelessness.

Last year the small centre was visited about 15,000 times, providing more than 8000 meals, about 5000 computer sessions, 2000 showers and numerous change of clothes. Their long term impact is excellent providing employment and training support and opportunities, help with finding accommodation, counselling and many other services, or pointers as to where to find more appropriate support. The Sanctuary is run by a very small staff team and relies on a fantastic team of over 40 trained volunteers from the local community to run the service.

We have seen what they do first hand and have been very impressed with the levels of commitment and support from their excellent team of volunteers and trustees. We can honestly say that every pound raised will be put to good use and, importantly, makes a big difference to a very valuable local charity.

Many thanks for reading this far. Please do donate, any amount will be very valuable and make a genuine difference. Our £1550 target represents approximately 1% of their total turnover last year and will make a genuinely significant difference to the Sanctuary. Examples of what the money might go to include: 

£10 pays for a visit – a hot meal, a shower and that all important phone call

£25 enables the Sanctuary to run an accredited life skills session for a young person, giving them the tools to improve their circumstances

£60 pays for one homeless youngster to access the service for a week, keeping them safe, off the streets and able to focus on making changes

£100 pays for training a volunteer to provide one-to-one support

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. So it’s the most efficient way to donate – saving time and cutting costs for the charity.