At the beginning of Lockdown 3.0 in January 2021, a group of eight Year 13 students from King Edward VI Camp Hill School for Boys decided to make a difference. Richard Amoshe, Yusof Elsherbiny, Abhinash Nirantharakumar, Rishi Pingili, Patrick Achusiogu, Aadam Audhali, Dylan Rees & Chethan Biju combined their love of sports and exercise with their want to help the lives and wellbeing of those around them.
King Edward VI Camp Hill School for Boys
"After seeing others around us being negatively affected both mentally and physically by the consecutive lockdowns, we decided to come together and raise money for YoungMinds through running, which has been one proven solution to improving mental wellbeing. In doing so, we hope to inspire others to do the same and not only raise money, but assist with their mental health".
YoungMinds is the UK's leading charity committed to the emotional wellbeing and mental health of children and young people. The charity are leading a movement to make sure that every young person gets the mental health support they need, when they need it, no matter what.
"In the UK today, an estimated five children in every classroom has a mental health problem. A quarter of 17-year-old girls have self harmed in the last year, while suicide remains the single biggest killer of boys and young men".
https://youngminds.org.uk/about-us/who-we-are/
The students originally aimed to run 1000km shared between the eight of them, over a period of 10 weeks starting on Monday 11th January. This is roughly the same distance from Birmingham to Italy! They hoped to raise at least £1000 during this time, but also to get people active and involved. Setting up an Instagram account to document their daily updates, was also a great way of people feeling inspired to either move with them, or donate.
In the end, the group reached their 1000km target in just over six weeks and smashed their fundraising total by donating £1,732 in total to YoungMinds. Alongside this, they managed to inspire hundreds of students to run a total of 897.55km and staff to run a total of 1584km, an inspirational effort all round
Mr Burgess, Head of PE & Games at King Edward VI Camp Hill School for Boys comments "I am so immensely proud of the boys for the achievement. They have done this off their own back, not only to raise money for an amazing charity, but also to help improve the mental and physical wellbeing of hundreds of people in what was a tough lockdown for many".
