After starting in Edinburgh on Monday 6th January, myself and a friend arrived in Seville on Sunday 12th January purely by hitchhiking and spending no money on accommodation or travel. We covered over 2000 miles and got 28 lifts of some incredible people. Seen as the both of us work for the two charities, we thought we may as well take the opportunity to try raise a bit more money on top of this fundraiser for the half marathon i‘ll be running!

In May 2020, I’ll be running the Edinburgh Half Marathon to raise money for two charities that I am involved in. I have no half marathon/marathon experience at all so it should be interesting! The charities I am running for are ‘Special Needs Action Project (SNAP)’ and ‘The Yard’ - two unbelievable charities that benefit children and young adults with a range of disabilities and complex needs. Each charity will receive 50% of the donations I make.

SNAP is based in Drummond School in Inverness and it offers a range of services during out of school hours for children and young people with learning disabilities from the age of 5 - 30. These services include: After School Clubs, ‘Out and Abouts’ in the local community, Holiday Leisure Schemes, Weekend Breaks and a Youth Club for young adults. SNAP is so important for both parent and child, due to the respite it gives the parents and the experiences of social interaction and new opportunities for the child/young person. I started volunteering back in 2016 and have been employed there since 2017, with me now working there whenever I am home from University.

For most of the year, I live in Edinburgh and study at University. In July of this year I started working at ‘The Yard’, which is an indoor and outdoor adventure play centre for disabled children and young people based in the heart of Edinburgh (but also has centres in Dundee and Fife). The Yard’s single purpose is to provide care, support, and opportunities for fun and friendship for disabled children and young people. The Yard works with over 2,200 families who have a disabled child aged 0-25, many of whom have multiple and complex needs. The Yard offers adventurous and creative inclusive play, in which the children and young people form friendships and gain new experiences from.

The money raised from this will benefit both places in so many ways. SNAP can use the money to make their services even more enjoyable and also fund weekend trips away for the children. The Yard can also use the money to go towards their amazing services but also to upgrade their inclusive play centre.

Having seeing firsthand how much SNAP and The Yard mean to the children, young adults and parents that use their services I can truly say that it is worthwhile making a donation to help support these two incredible charities that I am pleasured to be a part of. The sense of community these two places make is so strong and thats one of the things I love most. I could go on and on about what each charity does and how amazing they both are, but i‘ll leave that to the charities themselves and link both their websites at the bottom of this. Cheers for taking some time out to read this, would be so awesome and greatly appreciated if you could make any donation at all. Cheers.X