[This page will close in February 2013. Any future fundraising I do will be here]

I'm a keen practitioner and teacher of Brazilian jiu jitsu (if you're unfamiliar with BJJ, take a look at this), so when I decided to organise an event to raise some money for charity, I knew exactly how I wanted to do it: grappling!

Hence why the members of Gracie Barra Bristol are generously donating their time and bodies to the  Meningitis UK Charity GrappleThon 2012. We're going to grapple for 24 hours, from 9am on Saturday 22nd September until 9am Sunday 23rd September. The whole event will be streamed live over the internet, via this link (remember, you can donate from outside the UK too!).

Many thanks to GrappleThon sponsors, top BJJ artist and designer Seymour 'Meerkatsu' Yang and renowned BJJ and MMA apparel company, Tatami Fightwear.

UPDATE: The event went really well! Fantastic effort by everyone who came down. There were forty-four people sparring over the course of the day, several of whom racked up a total of six hours rolling! 

I've done a full write-up of the day here, with links to videos. Seymour has written one too, with lots of pics, here.

Writing this on the 15th February 2013, we've reached an excellent £3,015 on the team total: I think all the offline money has come in now, although there is a chance there may be another £100 or so. Either way, incredible work by all the fundraisers! Hopefully GrappleThon 2013, which is in support of the charity Rape Crisis, will be even more successful. :D