CHARITY-minded students at King’s Ely have raised more than £2,000 for a trust which supports children and young people with brain tumours.
Each year, the boys in King’s Ely Senior’s Osmond House choose a different charity or organisation to support and over the last 12 months they have been taking part in a wide variety of fundraising activities in aid of Tom’s Trust.
Tom’s Trust was set up in 2011 in memory of Tom Whiteley, a local boy who died of a brain tumour in November 2010, just seven months after being diagnosed with a malignant medulloblastoma brain tumour. Tom was aged just 9.
The trust’s main aim is to raise money to fund Paediatric Oncology Clinical Psychologists at Addenbrooke’s Hospital in Cambridge to help treat children with brain tumours, and support their families. The trust also aims to identify and work with a second UK hospital providing the Clinical Psychology provision within a second rehabilitation service, and to generally raise awareness of children with brain tumours in the UK.
On July 6th, the trust’s founder, Debs Whiteley, visited King’s Ely to meet the boys, the Housemaster of Osmond House, Paul Lott, and to receive a bumper cheque for £2,017.05p. Debs said she was both delighted and overwhelmed by the amount raised and that the money would enable around 10 children with brain tumours to access a clinical psychologist.
The majority of the money raised was achieved at Osfest – the annual fundraising extravaganza organised by students in Osmond House. Held in April, there were a feast of activities and attractions on offer including bouncy castles, a coconut shy, sports challenges, ‘sponge the teacher’, sponsored leg waxing, face painting, music, an ice cream van and a wide variety of stalls and raffles.
To find out more about Tom’s Trust, including how you can support the charity, please visit www.tomstrust.org.uk.