We are raising funds and awareness for a cause dearest to our hearts: research into all forms of childhood cancer. 

For this challenge page, various friends and family and I are looking to build upon the feat I managed for Teenage Cancer Trust in November 2021 when I completed 3,000 push ups in a month and raised £18,000. That challenge kicked off on the day of Ben’s funeral.

In May 2022 I completed another 3,000 push ups with my friend Chris Parsons keeping up for moral support, and in September 2022 more than 3,000 abdominal crunches (with a corresponding Facebook challenge adding more than £500). For the month of November 2022 I completed 3,000 bicep curls and/or shoulder raises using free weights. In March 2023 (after a short ‘break’ as I featured in another 3 shows in 3 months, all raising funds for Ben’s nominated charities) it was back to basics - good old fashioned push ups (press ups if you insist) and pull ups (overhand chin ups)  - again 3,000 in the month!  And so it was that on 31 March 2023 I racked up the milestone of 15,000 heavy reps since Ben’s death. 

Next we went for endurance, so in the run up to the second anniversary of Ben’s death on 8 October 2023 I challenged  myself to add to my fundraising total by undertaking 10,000 reps in 100 days! With help from my pace man, Susie Maycock, I maintained 35 push ups, 35 crunches and 30 heavy curls or arm raises every day from Friday 30 June to 7 October, and that was it: 25,000 reps! 

What these challenges shared in common was a mixture of pain and strength building. Watching a loved one go through cancer and/or losing a loved one to cancer is incredibly painful, but seeing them do so with dignity and courage is a source of great strength to their survivors, so these challenges seek in some small way to pay respect to that.

So far the challenges have caused a distended rib, a strained Achilles, plenty of back pain and hours and hours with psychotic physiotherapists and stretching out over stability balls and the like. The pain serves to remind us of the struggles a very special young man endured between June 2020 and October 2021, which struggles are emulated by dozens of children undergoing cancer treatments today and those who have survived treatment but are living under the constant fear of relapse.

Donations go to Ben Pavitt's Legacy of Love Fund, a Special Named Fund of CCLG set up in October 2021 and launched at Ben’s funeral on 1 November 2021 in memory of a young man who never backed away from the hardest challenges life can throw at us, and whose dying wishes included the establishment of this fund.

Through challenges like these and many other fundraising activities by our wonder supporters  we had by 1 March 2024 taken Ben’s Fund past £112,500 (inc Gift Aid).

Memorably, it was on Christmas Eve 2022  that total fundraising in Ben’s name surpassed £100,000 including Gift Aid (a combination of funds raised for CCLG, Teenage Cancer Trust, Friends of Paediatric ICU and the Piam Brown Childrens Oncology Ward at Southampton General Hospital). By Christmas 2023 we had passed £100,000 PLUS Gift Aid, with total overall fundraising across all relevant charities up to £142,000.

Please help us raise funds and awareness so that in future:

1. no family affected by childhood cancer should  have to endure the bitter loss we have felt and continue to feel every day; and

2. those who survive childhood cancer suffer fewer life limiting conditions as a result of their treatments.

Let this be Ben’s Legacy of ❤️. Thank you!