Thanks for taking the time to visit my JustGiving page :)

I am raising money for Redeeming Our Communities (ROC), to support our ROC Garden work in Blackpool.

ROC Garden is empowering the long term unemployed back into employment, and supporting residents who need a garden miracle of their own.

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This is what I’m doing to help raise these important funds:

Recently, John and I broke the Guinness World Record for 'the farthest distance pulling a vehicle in 24 hours' with a (minimum) 1.5 tonne vehicle.

Here is a link to the official listing on the Guinness World Records website:

https://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/96259-farthest-distance-pulling-a-vehicle-in-24-hours

The record now currently stands at a whopping 22.1 miles!! 

This year we intend to make it bigger and better!

October 2021 was a 'practice' run, and we are so glad that we evidenced the attempt. This year we will be joined by 2-3 more people who will also be attempting to set a new record with us. This time it will be a little bit more competitive, but as we are all good friends together, we will have some fun and healthy competition!

Our personal trainer, Neil Salanki (a lecturer and expert in sports science, fitness and nutrition) has been putting us through our paces, regularly testing us, and using our results to inform the science of what we need to do in order to manage our energy and muscular endurance across the whole challenge. We are so grateful to Neil and would highly recommend his services as a personal trainer.

The time line of events look something like this:

• ✅ 12th September 2021 - Blackpool Marathon. 26.2 mile run along Blackpool Promenade, dressed up as a STORM TROOPER!! LOL
• ✅ 25th September 2021 - 12 mile practice vehicle pull session (we're looking for volunteers to help steer our vans and walk with us)
• ✅ 9th October 2021 - 15 mile practice vehicle pull session (we're looking for volunteers to help steer our vans and walk with us)
• ✅ 23rd-24th of October 2021 (9:45am, Stanley Park Sports Arena, Blackpool) - World Record Day (2021). This was an incredible day, learning so much to help us break the record even further AGAIN in 2022. The current world record now stands at a 22.1 miles and is currently jointly held by James Baker & John Darwen
• Mid-Late Summer 2022 (dates & venue TBC) - 'The Next Big Thing' event! This will be John and I, plus Calvin, Daniel and hopefully 1 other, pulling a vehicle each (in competition with each other!!) to set a new the world record, and to break it good ;)

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It's fair to say that this is going to be the challenge of a life-time, and one that will not only be a monumental achievement for us, but an opportunity to highlight and raise money to support the incredible charity we are part of called, 

Redeeming Our Communities (ROC).

In a nutshell, what's all for? What's it all about?

ROC is a national community engagement charity that is based in Manchester and has sites all across the UK, including Northern Ireland. ROC works to form action-based partnerships with people of goodwill to create safer and kinder communities. There are lots of different types of ROC projects including, ROC Conversations, ROC Mentoring, ROC Restore, ROC Champions, ROC Cafe, etc.

https://roc.uk.com (to find out more)

The project that we are involved in is 'ROC Garden'. This is a project that I personally pioneered from grass-roots through a local church in Preston just over 11 years ago. It started off as a small team of volunteers stuffing gardening equipment from our parent's sheds into the boot of our cars and heading off to help transform gardens for residents that needed help bringing them to a manageable level.

Over the years the project moved from Preston to Blackpool to grow under the guidance of Blackpool Coastal Housing, and then later moved to become part of ROC in order to help it grow and expand even further!

Currently ROC Garden is now serving more than 400 regular households with garden maintenance, transforming around 50 overgrown gardens a year for free for residents struggling in social housing, providing practice grounds opportunities for volunteers by revitalising grot spots around the town, and have created an incredible volunteer training programme that is leading the vast majority of people we train into paid employment!

We are now receiving more and more requests to expand into new areas, and even in Blackpool the demand for our work is growing week-by-week through word-of-mouth, social media and the hand of God!

I'm raising money so that I can help ROC Garden achieve its next big thing!

The next big thing could be so many different things at the moment, including taking on some new staff to help us grow and to train new volunteers, it could be to purchase a new van to help us reach and serve more people, it could be to invest into our volunteers by purchasing new uniforms and PPE.

At the end of the day, we can see ROC Garden growing and expanding into something incredible, and we can see the model becoming something that could soon have a regional and national presence!

Your support could help make all the difference!

If you could donate once, or make a regular monthly donation, you can be part of:

• Helping unemployed people move into employment as we train them to become proficient gardeners. 
• You would be part of putting a huge smile and a tear in the eye of the resident we provide a big garden transformation for.
• Helping us expand into new areas, and reach more people who need help with their garden.
• Your support could mean the world to so many different people.

To find out more about who we are, please check out our Facebook page here: 

https://www.facebook.com/ROCGardenServices

@rocgardenservices 

If you're a business and would like to provide financial support towards the costs of the events, or to make a donation towards our work, please send us an email as well. We would be more than happy to discuss ideas, options and answer questions.

If you would like to volunteer on the event and practice days, then please let us know too! We need as many people as possible to help steward, steer, feed and keep our motivation levels high :)

Please email us here:

gardenservices@roc.uk.com

Thank you

James :)

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