To Children With Love - My MdS Charity

This episode will be introducing my chosen charity for the 2018 MdS.

The founder and managing director is a lady called Debbie Deegan. Debbie is a personal friend, I met her through my wife, Liz Hoefsmit (was Cusack). Liz and Debbie met when they were 10/11 and have been friends ever since.

Debbie has been working tirelessly in Russia since 1998 with the orphaned and abandoned children of the Bryansk Region and more recently with children in Kaluga, Tula and Moscow Region. Debbie is also the Chairperson of the Russian registered charity To Children With Love in Russia. This is the sister charity of To Russia With Love that strives to raise funds in Russia itself.

More details here:

The Team

ToChildrenWithLove

Mission Statement

Our goal is to support young people to achieve their full potential in education, employment and life.

Social exclusion and educational inequality negatively impacts the lives of young people reducing their self belief, dignity and well being. Our targeted programmes enhance young people’s self esteem, life skills and qualifications helping them to forge fulfilled lives within their communities and beyond. Our programmes have been developed over a 20 year period working with young people nationally and internationally.

This episode will be introducing my chosen charity for the 2018 MdS.

Donations via this link

Helping Children to Reach Their Full Potential

Seven Overseas (not Republic of Ireland) Programmes

International

• Social Integration Programme
• The New Start Programme
• Playroom Programme
• Finale Step Programme
• Mother & Baby Programme
• Sports Programme
• Life Skills Programme

Republic of Ireland - The Rising Tide Project

• Business Bootcamp
• Gardening Programme
• Coder Dojo Coding Club
• Discover Ireland Programme
• Scholarship Programme

Training is going reasonable. It'll be a slow edition this year. But that is fine with me, as I want to enjoy the Sahara even more than the previous two editions.

Week 2017-11-16 Journey to the third MdS continues

Important items first:
Chosen Charity: To Children with Love
Donation page: Donation link


Had the best of intentions for the week of 30 October. However I woke up that Monday morning the 30th with a throat feeling like sandpaper. No worries I thought, that's my annual three days of having a cold. How wrong was I? It lasted way into the week of the sixth of November.

The whole week of the 30th I was on two a day Lemsip, vitamin (every kind) tables with hot water. It helped a bit but not much.

Week of sixth of November we were in the Maldives for our honeymoon. I went to the gym once, the resort is about a mile long, so no running. Did three dives tho, not sure how that counts as training but it surely was amazing being underwater with the fishes. Some pictures here of it.

Random Fish in the Indian Ocean

View from the seaplane

In the BA flight

More views from the seaplane

Back in the UK, at least on the 15th of November I went back to CrossFit. Still suffering with chest tightness, so breathing isn't that easy. But 16 November I will be back. Running still isn't doable because of the chest cold. More Lemsip and vitamin pills coming up.

Coming back from the Maldives has kicked in proper jet lag. Been up everyday since Tuesday 14 November at around 04:30. Means back to bed around 21:30 and repeat.

Not long now before To Children with Love, my chosen charity has it's annual fundraising event in Clontarf Castle. I've made the "generous" offer to speak there. Not sure what to say, but I'll make it up as we go :-).

Guess this is about it for now. As I said, will try to keep them short and "sweet".