ForCrohns

ForCrohns is the brainchild of local residents Natasha Adley and Lisa Meleck who, whilst still at school started organising their first WalkforCrohns event.

They have successfully organised 4 more WalkforCrohns charity events in London’s Hyde Park and have now added SingforCrohns at the Royal College of Music to their impressive fundraising CV.

Within just a few years, the amazing achievements of these two young ladies resulted in their nomination for Cosmopolitan Magazine’s “Women of the Year” award. After rigorous interviews and short-listing against strong competition, they won this outstanding accolade in November 2007. Our picture (second one down on this page) shows Natasha and Lisa receiving their Award’.

I caught up with Natasha to find out what was the inspiration for their fundraising achievements. “We got started in 2002 after Lisa and I met on a summer camp and discovered both our mums have Crohn’s disease. We wanted to raise awareness and decided on a sponsored walk. After WalkforCrohns 2003 proved to be such a huge success it became clear we could make this an annual event.

It may sound clichéd but my Mum is the person I admire the most as she is the strongest person I know so I wanted to do something not only for her but for other sufferers. Crohns and Colitis can be embarrassing problems but we need to raise awareness, to raise funds into research so those who suffer can have a hope of finding a cure.”

So far, Natasha and Lisa have raised an incredible £120,000.00 which is split between two charities: The St Mark's Hospital Foundation and 'Crohn's and Colitis in Childhood' (The 3C's). The money given to the St Mark's Hospital Foundation goes to clinical research into Irritable Bowel Disease. The 3C's does research into finding a cure for Crohn's.

Organising these events has lead to publicity for them both including a live interview on LBC radio, coverage on ITN News, features in Hello! Magazine and Metro newspaper, all of which have helped raise much needed publicity for the disease.

Their patron is Les Ferdinand and other celebrity supporters include Louise Redknapp, Duncan James and Crohn’s sufferer Carrie Grant who presented their Women of the Year award. “When we won “Cosmopolitan Women of the Year” it was just such an amazing feeling for both of us. It really inspired us to want to do more, much, much more. We felt particularly humbled when we looked at what many of the other winners had achieved.”

“Last year we rebranded as ForCrohns so that we could start to broaden our events and thus we created SingForCrohns to attract a new audience. We held auditions for the singing competition in September and the main event took place on 1st November 2008 at the Royal College of Music. There was an expert panel of judges and an audience of 400 who could vote interactively and it was a huge success thanks to everyone who helped. Our special congratulations go to Claire Yaxley who was the SingForCrohns 2008 winner!”

“We now want to go on to organise more events to continue our original objectives. Corporate sponsorship is what we struggle most with – and the more money we can get in this way the more variety and larger scale our events can be. Sponsoring SingForCrohns 2009 is a great opportunity for companies.

We are always very grateful to those who help and definitely want more people to get involved – whether it’s to walk or take an active role in organising other events, such as quiz nights or comedy nights. We can always be contacted through our website www.forcrohns.org.”

So what do you do when you are not fundraising? I asked Natasha.

“Well I love to travel and recently went to Iceland which was an incredibly beautiful country with fantastic views and I would love to go back. My favourite has to be Italy though, I love the food, the language, in fact everything! I’m not a great one for shopping so my biggest extravagance is going to dinner then the theatre or a concert. I love to read and never find I have enough time so it’s a great luxury to sit with a book.” “My philosophy is to embrace life and take every opportunity that comes my way. I am enormously proud of what I have achieved so far - getting a First at University, our charity work and the award, but there is a lot more we can do and Corporate sponsorship is the battle we’ll continue to fight for over the coming years. Wish us luck!”

WalkforCrohns 2009 takes place on Sunday 12th July in Hyde Park, London. It’s a 10km walk or run. Lunch, tea and a t-shirt together with entertainment are included in the £10 registration fee. The event caters to all abilities – families with children, those who want a relaxed stroll and the more discerning sportsmen who want to run the 10km.

Register at www.forcrohns.org.

This article was created on Friday, 13th February 2009. It was last tinkered with on Monday, 24th May 2010.

This is the 36th issue of Flea Magazine in Watford. The on-line version of the articles below includes additional content that we couldn't fit into the printed version.

View the printed version in pdf format. Get Adobe reader

Read previous editions from our archive,

Inside Watford Flea 206

Advertising