This week saw the team do their first donor drive with Starcom, who are based in the BBC Televison centre in White City London.
The team set up for two days due to the number of occupants in the building and it was well worth it. There was a steady flow of people over the course of the event and everyone there was helpful and friendly.
In the end they managed to sign up a whopping 266 people!!!!! This is an incredible number and couldnt have been acheived without all the help we received. A massive thank you to Amy Kean and Lorena Di Lello for organising the event, Jayde Jarret, Ellis Parsons, Sarah Robson, Neville, Darren and Alex for helping out over the course of the two days. A special thank you to Emily Carroll from Homeslice for providing us with food over the two days and everyone who came down to sign up and continues to raise awareness.
Two of the Starcom team that signed up at the event
Back in June we shared via our Facebook page that global digital marketing agency Croud were embarking upon a HUGE challenge to raise money for Race Against Blood Cancer.
On 15th – 17th June their team of eight cyclists raced from London to Amsterdam and reached the finish line within their target finish time of under 36 hours! Wow!
We are pleased to share that the team raised over £7,400 for the charity – So many lives will be effected in a positive way with these funds, which will be used to help us register more lifesaving blood stem cell and bone marrow donors.
We would like to say a massive thank you to the team for their time and dedication – we massively appreciate Croud’s ongoing support for Race Against Blood Cancer and their willingness to help such an important cause.
If you would like to take part in a sporting event to help raise vital funds for our charity, then please get in touch with Emma – emma.brown@raceagainstbloodcancer.com
Last Sunday Race Against Blood Cancer held a donor drive supporting Flagz Mas Band at Wandsworth Arts Fringe in London, where the team worked hard to sign up more potential lifesaving donors to the blood stem cell register.
We would like to thank all those that showed up to register and to the organisers for allowing us to pitch up and engage with the community. We would also like to give a special thanks to the work of our team members Alex Morrison and Lenah Lang who continue to help those people needing lifesaving transplants.
Nearly 200 potential lifesaving donors signed up in just two donor drives at Google offices
Last week the Race Against Blood Cancer team popped into the Google offices in London to do another donor drive. After last year’s visit where we signed up over 100 donors, we were kindly invited back to capture any employees who may have been away. It was snowing and cold outside but the feeling inside was far from it as we managed to sign up an additional 65 potential lifesaving donors!
A massive thank you to Sam Smith who organised the event and all of those at Google who took the time to register. We would also like to show our appreciation to our community engagement manager Alex Morrison and volunteer Alex Kiffin who once again were on hand to sign up willing participants!
Alex Kiffin and some new volunteer donors at Google
Wednesday 15th November 2017 will go down in Race Against Blood Cancer history as the day that one of the donors that the team registered went on to successfully donate their stem cells in hope of saving the life of a patient in need.
After coming close on no less than 10 other occasions, the team were overjoyed to learn that James Burton had been invited to Harley Street, London, to carry out the important yet simple procedure. What made the news even more special was that James registered at the launch event for the charity in the summer of 2015, where the team held a dinner, dance and golf tournament to announce their arrival as a burgeoning charity with big ambitions.
James had originally been contacted to be a match last year but at the last minute, to his disappointment he was informed that he wasn’t required. This time around everything was smooth sailing. James had a nurse visit him 4 days prior to heading to the clinic, to give him an injection to stimulate the growth of his white cells and travelled to London the day before the procedure.
In the end James harvested his stem cells over the course of two days with the procedure itself painless as expected. For those of you following the live video footage via Facebook, you’ll have seen a very relaxed James occupying himself by playing Football Manager throughout, while being amused by Alex Morrison, our Community Engagement lead.
We would like to say a massive thank you to James – words cannot express how grateful we are to him. We would also like to thank all of those who have donated and continue to support Race Against Blood Cancer, DKMS and the incredible staff on the day at The London Clinic.
Witnessing the life changing impact their efforts have had for a blood cancer patient in need, the team is as motivated as ever to find the next James Burton and have some great plans in place to continue raising awareness of the lack of diversity of those signed up to the donor register and running many more donor drives to find many more matches.
On 22nd July, a team of 17 brave triathletes completed the AJ Bell London Triathlon for Race Against Blood Cancer. This was the second time Race Against Blood Cancer teams participated in the event to raise money for the charity and its ongoing efforts to help save lives.
Despite the weather not being on their side, the triathletes stayed strong and passed the finish line with smiles on their face and pride in their hearts.
Known to be the world’s largest triathlon attracting over 13,000 participants and 30,000 spectators, the AJ Bell Triathlon never disappoints. And 2017 was no exception. Offering many different formats and distances, Race Against Blood Cancer saw triathletes leave in various waves throughout the day.
We are immensely proud and appreciative of the of the great team effort that went into this event. Despite the hard work, sweat and tears, the team managed to raise thousands of pounds to help give every blood cancer patient an equal chance of finding a suitable match.
The Race Against Blood Cancer team would like to give a special thank you to our top individual fundraiser for this event, Maleena Pone, who despite never having been in to sports, she manged to fit triathlon training into her very busy weeks and learnt how to swim just for the event. Many thanks Maleena for being amazing and raising £700 for the charity via your mydonate page.
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Thank you to all those taking part in the event as well as the spectators who went to cheer the team on. You were all amazing! Special thanks also for the support of Global Accounting Team and Team Twenty 5 Eight.
We look forward to the 2018 event – if you would like to join our team next year, please reach out to ben.westwood@raceagainstbloodcancer.com for more information
Race Against Blood Cancer will be well represented at this year’s London AJ Bell Triathlon, taking place once again at the London ExCel on the weekend of 22nd July.
Known to be the world’s largest triathlon attracting over 13,000 participants and 30,000 spectators, the AJ Bell Triathlon never disappoints. The event is quickly becoming a firm favourite in the team’s event calendar, with our debut in 2016 where we entered 18 triathletes and raised thousands of pounds in sponsorship.
The team will be looking to go one better this year and is aiming to field a team of over 40 participants, run a donor drive on the day and raise over £10,000 in valuable funds which will help our efforts to save lives.
The event offers many different formats and distances. From the full Olympic distance, to a Sprint or the Team relay where a team of 3 people take on one of each, the swim, ride or run! As an official charity we have a discounted price of £99 for all race formats.
Full Olympic: 1500m Swim | 40k Bike Ride | 10k Run
Sprint: 750m Swim | 20k Bike Ride | 5k Run
Team Relay: Either of the above distances is completed by a team of 3 people
Get in touch today and sign up! Contact ben.westwood@raceagainstbloodcancer.com
A little bit goes a long way. Save a life in 2017!
Media Madness sees our Community Engagement team set a new record at Teads London office.
Teads, a global leader in the video advertising space warmly welcomed our team on Tuesday 6th December. This marked the second drive of Media Madness with the previous record of 97 bone marrow and stem cell donor registrations currently held by Bauer Media.
On the day itself the team registered a willing 60 new donors which was an incredible achievement considering there are only 70 employees in their London office and 65 were in on this particular day.
Despite Bauer Media still topping the Media Madness leaderboard in terms of numbers, Teads set a new record for the per person ratio of those people onsite who came forward to sign up at an impressive 92%. The team at Race Against Blood Cancer couldn’t be any happier with the way the day went, with Teads truly raising the bar in terms of active participation.
A massive thank you to Elle Panes and Jonathan Nash who organised the donor drive for us on the day and did a great job rallying the troops.
November 8th marked our 20th donor drive of a busy 2016 where we were warmly welcomed by an enthusiastic team at Bauer Media UK.
As one of Europe’s largest privately-owned media groups, Bauer Media is an entertainment network of iconic, multi-platform brands.
This particular donor drive was a long time coming and is somewhat fitting that in the end the drive kicked off Media Donor Drive Madness! The highly competitive 4th quarter is where we have several media companies lined up to do end of year donor drives, with each company we visit trying to top the leader board with the most donors signed up on the day.
A massive thank you goes to Ryan Hawking-Skeggs. Not only was Ryan instrumental in organising the donor drive he took Alex our lead on the day from desk to desk to sign people up to the register.
The team would also like to extend its appreciation to everyone who supported on the day and to an extremely willing audience. As a result of such goodwill Media Donor Drive Madness had a hugely impressive start with 97 new donors registering on the day.
The amazing team at Latimer invited Race Against Blood Cancer to their event “Latimer Live” on 27th October held at the ever popular Oval Space in Bethnal Green, London.
Latimer live is an event bringing together the UK’s top emerging talent for a night of live performances and DJ sets. Previous acts have included grime stars Stormzy and Lethal Bizzle.
For those new UK music lovers who have never attended these events before, they come highly recommended. This year’s event had performances from Abracadabra, winner of Best Song at this year’s MOBO awards for Robbery remix with Krept & Konan, Mez, Kojey Radical, Knucks, Snoochie Shy, Chennessey and many more.
The night itself was filled with high energy, good vibes and a lot of dancing. The team signed a total of 32 new donors up which was also great considering the lead time we had in arranging the event. Throughout the night, we also met a number of people who have been affected by blood cancer and were interested to know more on how they could help beyond joining the registry.
This was a great night, full of talent and energy for Race Against Blood Cancer to be present at. We would like to say a massive thank you to Louise, Jack and Alfred at Latimer and to all the people who signed up on the night to help save a life.
