Swimathon 2018 - a quarter century of swimming for charity

I first took part in the Swimathon twenty-four years ago in 1994.

This year I hope to take part in Swimathon 2018 at Copeland pool, Hensingham on Saturday 28th April.

So this will be the 25th consecutive year I have swum the 5,000 metre challenge.

The Swimathon is Britain’s largest charity swim, and gives people of very varied swimming abilities an opportunity to raise money for charity by swimming distances of up to 5,000 metres. The 2018 Swimathon event is in aid of Marie Curie, who look after thousands of terminally ill people, and also, for the first time, Cancer Research UK, the world’s leading cancer charity.

Marie Curie, the UK’s leading charity for people with any terminal illness and their families, has been Swimathon's charity partner ten times since it launched in 1986 and has raised over £17 million for the charity through the event during that time.

A big thank you to anyone reading this who sponsored me or any other Swimathon participant in the past.

If you sponsor me, or any of the other swimmers taking part in the world’s biggest fundraising swimming event, you will be supporting two incredible causes. You can do so online via my Justgiving page at:


https://www.justgiving.com/fundraising/chris-whiteside2018

Comments

Chris Whiteside said…
This is what Marie Curie themselves told the News and Star about Swimathon 2018.

Kelly Knighting-Wykes, Marie Curie’s Fundraising Manager for Cumbria, said:

“Since Marie Curie first became a partner of Swimathon we have recruited over 150,000 swimmers and raised £12 million, which has enabled us to provide care and support to more people living with any terminal illness such as dementia, motor neurone disease or Parkinson’s disease – at the time when they need it most.

We’re hoping people across Cumbria are as excited as us about this year’s Swimathon and will join us by taking the plunge and signing up for what will be another great challenge.”
1:48 pm
Chris Whiteside said…
The Swimathon Foundation has helped thousands of people improve their health through swimming through various initiatives, including swimming programmes for those with special needs, participation schemes by youth groups, clubs for the elderly, swimming clubs and disability groups. It has also helped them to do so in ways which raised millions of pounds for all kinds of people in need, including but not limited to cancer sufferers.

The accounts and auditors statements for the Swimathon Foundation are available online via both Companies House and the government Charity Commission site: I have looked at those accounts and they appear both to be perfectly in order and to show that the majority of money raised from previous Swimathon events went to good causes.

(I would not normally bother even to mention that except that some sad individual with nothing better to do attempted to use this blog to post an attack on the Swimathon Foundation. I am satisfied that there is no merit whatsoever in that view: anyone who wishes to post such things should set up their own blog, it does not deserve any further discussion here.)
9:40 am
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Nick Herbert on his visit to flood hit areas of Cumbria

Please note that the post below was published more than ten year ago on 21st November 2009 Nick Herbert MP, shadow cabinet member for the Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs, was in Cumbria this morning to see the areas affected by the flooding. He writes on Conservative Home about his visit. Here is an extract. I’ve been in Cumbria today to see the areas affected by the floods. I arrived early in Keswick where I met officials from the Environment Agency. Although the river levels had fallen considerably and homes were no longer flooded, the damage to homes had been done. And the water which had got into houses wasn’t just from the river – it was foul water which had risen from the drains. I talked to fire crews who were pumping flood water back into the river, and discovered that they were from Tyne & Wear and Lancashire. They had been called in at an hours’ notice and had been working on the scene ever since, staying at a local hotel. You cannot fail to be impressed by the
Read more

Quotes of the day 19th August 2020

Image
"Wise men profit more from fools than fools from wise men; for the wise men shun the mistakes of fools, but fools do not imitate the successes of the wise."  ( Cato the Elder , who lived 234 BC - 149 BC, quoted in "Lives" by Plutarch.) There is a similar saying by Germany's Iron Chancellor, Otto von Bismarck: Benjamin Franklin is supposed to have put the same saying in a more humorous form: "Wise men profit by the mistakes of others, while fools will not learn even from their own blunders." See also this thread on the "Quote Investigator" website . Let us all be wise and learn from the events of the last few days.
Read more

Quote of the day 24th July 2020

I was moved to put the passage below forward as a quote today when I saw a horrible post on twitter from someone writing that it was "excellent" that someone who took a different view from her about Brexit had died. I won't write which way round it was so that all the Remain supporters can assume the post was from a Brexit fanatic welcoming the death of a remainer and all the Leavers can assume it was a Remainiac welcoming one less Brexiteer. There's been plenty of nasty stuff on both sides but if you catch anyone of your own viewpoint  posting something like that who might listen to you, please do call them out on it - and point out that they're giving everyone on your side of the argument a bad name. Anyway, here's the quote from John Donne.
Read more