I’ve chosen to set myself an early challenge and on 19 Feb 2022 to run a half marathon from Ironbridge to Bridgnorth and back.  For those of you who don’t know this beautiful part of Shropshire, it is blessed (or cursed) with a hilly undulating terrain.

One of the reasons I’m doing this is to get back to previous levels of fitness I had mid 2021, but more importantly to raise awareness and funds for SYA, a Shropshire Youth Charity that has come onto my radar recently.  SYA are All About Youth with their vision being that every young person in Shropshire has access to affordable leisure activities.  Through running Youth Clubs, Youth Projects, delivering safeguarding training to voluntary youth groups like Scouts, Young Farmers they enable circa 6000 young people a year to experience safe leisure activities in their communities.  I think this is just wonderful.  There’s a couple of their Youth Projects I’m particularly interested in financially supporting.

1.  They run 2 groups in Shrewsbury and Oakengates fortnightly for young people from LGBTQ+ backgrounds.

2. They run a mental health drop in project at many local towns called HEADS UP, very much an early intervention, low key, safe place for young people to learn about and talk about mental health.

It is this second project that I am particularly interested in supporting as am very aware of the strain I see and hear parents talk about their young people being under, particularly in light of Covid, social media pressures, and more.  It is my intention to be able to buy a laptop that the youth workers  who run these sessions could use to explore issues with the young people attending, share links to support ideas – simply a useful tool for them to have in their kit.

You can find out more about the work of SYA via their website www.sya.org.uk, or emailing fundraising@sya.org.uk.

And here’s a couple of ideas for how you could donate to this challenge:

1. If you’re doing Dry January, donate to this page and SYA the money you might usually have spent on alcohol.

2. If you’re doing Veganary donate the difference you see in your weekly food shop through not buying meat.

3. I’ll publish my training RAINING plan, and donate a £1 each time I train in the rain!