Thanks for visiting this team fundraising page.
Tom and Pancho have joined together to raise money for two great charities: Medical Detection Dogs and Puzzle Centre by running the New York Marathon on November 6th. You'll see our fundraising target on the right. Your donation can really help us smash this goal.
Medical Detection Dogs (MDD) is a superb charity that does crusading early intervention work and research using highly trained dogs to sniff out diseases, including prostate cancer and diabetes. Its recent advances (MDD is backed by several leading doctors and scientists) have already helped many, not only by detecting diseases but by providing dogs to act as companions to patients with specific health problems. My sister, Betsy, is actively involved with MDD and, having attended an open day at the charity, I can vouch that the work they are doing is life transforming.
Puzzle Centre is a brilliant charity that provides superb, groundbreaking education and support for children with autismand their families. My sister, Fanny, works as a Special Learning Assistant there, so I have heard first hand what an inspirational set up it is. If I can hit my target of £500 it would really make a positive contribution to the amazing work of the Puzzle team. As I was brought up in Buckinghamshire, the charity is also near to my home village, and a superb local cause.
I'm donning a dog suit (not a clown one!) partly because of MDD and partly as it's a good excuse for running slowly but also because I recently walked 1000 miles with a street dog called Pancho along the US/Mexico border. The children's book I wrote, Pancho's Song, is published in America (by the El Paso Community Foundation) and raising money for Mexican charities in the border town of Ciudad Juarez, including a homeless shelter (Vision in Action), an emergency ambulance service (Cruz Verde) and a youth charity (Fundacion Communitaria de la Frontera Norte).
As the marathon is in New York, for any Americans or Mexicans who want to support more local causes it is possible to buy the book on kindle or amazon.com - and all books bought online go directly to helping Juarez charities.
All donations made on Just Giving, however, are purely for the wonderful Medical Detection Dogs and Puzzle Centre. See below the links to the two charities and you can choose to donate either to MDD or Puzzle Centre (each has a seperate fundraising page) - Pancho and I are trying to raise £500 for each cause, so £1000 in total.
Remember: Donating through JustGiving is simple, fast and totally secure. Your details are safe with JustGiving - they'll never share them with anyone or send you unwanted emails. Once you donate, they'll send your money directly to the charity. They'll make sure Gift Aid (an additional 25%) is reclaimed on every eligible donation by a UK taxpayer, too. That means more money goes to the charity, faster, with JustGiving.
