Welcome to my site! I hope that you will find it interesting to read about the fund-raising that I do using collectable Bean Bag toys to raise money for Cancer Research UK.

Sir Ranulph Fiennes and me - St George's Day 2004

How it started:

It all began when I donated a Ty Beanie Baby for a raffle prize in a local toy shop.
This was in the height of the Beanie Baby craze and I was amazed at how much money was raised by one small soft toy!

After holding a few more raffles for various causes, I read a leaflet one day about Race for Life.
It told me that the event was a 5km walk or run for women and girls, in aid of Cancer Research UK.
I decided that this was something that I could do, as unfit as I was, and set out to get as much sponsorship as I could.
My personal motivation at that time was the loss of my father to bowel cancer in 1967 at the young age of 38
and the recent death of one of our young school pupils from a brain tumour.

I was lucky to have so much support from so many different groups of people.
To make the sponsorship fun for them as well as myself, I held a series of fundraising events,
including a massive draw of Beanie Babies in the school where I worked, another draw in the toy shop, an online draw within a large Beanie collecting group
and an appeal in Bean Bag Magazine.

I was thrilled to collect sponsorship totaling over £1200! All of the prizes had been donated by Ty Europe, local toy shops and friends all over the world!

This showed me that together, people CAN make a difference, and I was encouraged to carry on raising money for the charity.
Unfortunately around the time of the first Race for Life we received the news that my father-in-law had secondary bone cancer.
That determined me to fight harder for a better future for other cancer sufferers.

To date, in August 2007, with the help of many people
including major collectables manufacturers, retailers and individual collectors as well as media, I have been able to raise over

£47,000

AS AN INDIVIDUAL, AS A FAMILY, THROUGH WORK, THROUGH JUSTGIVING,
THROUGH DIRECT DONATIONS
AND MOSTLY THROUGH CHERISH FUNDRAISING

for charity, mostly for Cancer Research UK

...and £4,000 for the DEC Tsunami Earthquake Appeal

£725 for the London Bombings Relief Fund

Plus smaller amounts for other appeals