Dear friends, family and colleagues

Please sponsor my Edinburgh marathon run to raise money for St Crispin’s special needs school.

My son Mylo attends St Crispin’s School, a special needs school offering highly individualised teaching to 75 children with additional support needs across Edinburgh. Pupils tend to have Autism with complex lifelong intellectual disabilities and are typically nonverbal with low safety awareness. St Crispin’s school provides specialist teaching, with class sizes of up to 5 pupils with speech and language, occupational and sensory therapies to nurture independence, life skills and inclusion.

I’m a trustee of Friends of St Crispin’s, the school’s charity run by volunteers of ambitious parents and teaching staff who wish to alleviate pupil’s struggles and help lay the foundations for fulfilling lives.

We are raising £50,000 with all funds going to provide positive outcomes for pupils via;

1) Playground refurbishment

o New playground equipment: The school has limited play equipment but with pupil numbers up 1/3rd we now need additional sensory swings, sunken trampolines, climbing frames and sensory zones. I struggle to find the words to articulate the exhilaration on Mylo's face as he experiences the freedom of swings, jumps or conquering a new climb.

o Rectifying playground muddy puddles – one of Mylo’s favourite messy spots to elope and roll around in (sorry Mylo…).

o Planting beds to allow pupils to engage with nature and learn new skills and responsibilities.

2) Transportation to provide pupils with access to social and community activities including visits to the shops, parks, theatre productions etc.

3) Outreach work to support parents through challenges, eg emergency incontinence supplies and strategies for home support to mirror classroom techniques.

Our school is a lifeline for pupils and we have ambitious goals to make a meaningful and lasting positive lifelong impact.

All donations, big or small would help us get closer to achieving our ambitious goals and make a lasting positive impact for St Crispin’s pupils.

A number of you have been extremely generous in my previous marathon fundraiser. This is (yet another) attempt to get close to my late father’s marathon time of 3 hours 10 minutes. Despite hundreds of training miles my PB of 3 hours 20 minutes mean I will need a fair tail wind to get close…

Thank you for considering supporting us.

Mo