BBC Children in Need day is the day that the Beeb ask us for cash to fund projects for those less fortunate than others. Of course what you have to remember is that the work of Pudsey and his Pals doesn’t happen once a year but is in fact a 365 day a year job.
I will always have a strong affections and affinity with Children in Need, I am a disabled person, but I know that I am also incredibly lucky by the same measure. My disability only really effects my legs, which means I use a wheelchair, I am still able to communicate with ease, feed myself and express emotions.
Maybe it’s my personality, maybe it’s my upbringing, but I have always tried to have empathy with those who experience difficulty in their lives. I know how ever hard my life may seem and how down I get there will always someone who is struggling to cope with far more challenging lifestyles than mine.
I went to a Special School and every Children in Need day we were encouraged to join in with the fundraising efforts, we were told stories of other disabled children and I can remember feeling the swell of empathy for those children who found the small things that I took for granted.
I decided from that year on I would do all I could to help provide kids who weren’t as lucky as me, who didn’t have as many opportunities as I did or weren’t as privileged as me to have that loving support of a family around them.
I knew the kids who I were helping, didn’t no me, but it didn’t really matter. I’ve always said that life no matter how hard and dark it gets at time is wonderful and wanted to give them, that feeling
At the time of leaving school at the age of 17 my efforts for Children in Need had amounted to around £2,5000 partaking in sponsored silences for the day and using communication aids to help get my point across, dressing up like a burke, shaking buckets and dancing non stop for 8 hrs with Pudsey it all amounted to something and I was always amazed at the generosity of the public, who supported my challenges.
I was lucky enough to work for BBC Children In Need in 2010 for a few weeks post campaign night, for a brief period I to see where the money I had raised had gone, I helped to deliver the news to applicants to Children in Need that they had been successful.
These were some of the most emotional phone calls I have ever had to deal with, the difference that your money makes to kids who really need it is incredible, you have no idea how much your support means to charities and organisations that support disadvantaged and disabled children in the UK. Even the small amounts of money that you think don’t make a difference, really, really do.
When I was 3, I started school. A few years after that, the School was given a range of specially adapted bikes via Children in Need, All I had ever wanted to do as a kid was learn to ride a bike. It was very exciting, my mate was on the telly and everything
It was hard work for my little legs and I never really quite mastered it, but as a small kid riding a bike was the one thing I wanted to do all my other able bodied friends wanted to do it, so did I.
The Children in Need bike, made me feel like an ordinary kid and the feeling of self propelling my own bike was a feeling that has never left me and never will.
If you’ve ever donated to Children in Need, to you I say thank you. You will never know how much I loved riding that bike and I wouldn’t have been able to without your donation
If you’ve never donated, maybe this year is the time to change that fact?
Donate to Children in Need
