Teams of enterprising Sunderland business students have taken part in a challenge in which they took £25 and used it to raise thousands more for a children’s charity.
The first-year students – all studying at the University of Sunderland’s Faculty of Business, Law and Tourism – raised a total of £5,597.77 for north-east charity The Children’s Foundation.
Innovative ideas to generate cash included holding music nights and pub quizzes, hosting a Greek party, and making pancakes and baking cakes. Students took part in charity walks and a charity abseil, during which one student even cracked a rib.
One student dyed his hair pink while another almost got a sponsored tattoo. Another student got people to pay her to wash dishes in her hall of residence for a month.
33 teams took part in the four-week Take 25 Challenge, which was sponsored by Intu Eldon Square. All the teams were invited to a prize night at Revolution Sunderland towards the end of last year, where prizes were given out to the winning team, the runners-up and outstanding individuals.
The winning team was Heroes for Children, who raised £564.31, and the runners-up were William’s Warriors, who chalked up a total of £537.81.
The Children’s Foundation has – since 1990 – been working to provide children and young people in the north east and north Cumbria with excellent health and wellbeing services.
The charity has raised money to build a specialist children’s hospital in Newcastle, installed 11 3-D pain distraction units in north east hospitals, and distributed small grants to community groups across the region.
The Children’s Foundation is committed to tackling any distress, disability or disadvantage suffered by the region’s youngsters and has recently been particularly focused on the issue of child mental health.
Laura McVeigh, the charity’s fundraising and event manager, said, “The brilliant thing about Take 25 is that students taking part develop their teamwork and entrepreneurial skills while supporting the work of The Children’s Foundation across the north east. So everyone benefits.”
Module leader Joel Arnott said, “This challenge provided students with a fantastic opportunity to develop, learn and give back to their community.”
“Overall, the students enthusiastically embraced the opportunity. There were a good number of exceptional team performances and the overall result was amazing, surpassing the expected outcome by some margin.”
To learn more about the work of The Children’s Foundation, please visit www.thechildrensfoundation.co.uk.
(Featured image courtesy of Stuart Frisby, from Flickr Creative Commons)
