Always ready for the challenge: thank you
In our latest newsletter we focused on all the wonderful things our community of writers and letter recipients have been up to. We love finding out more about the challenges that you take on - especially when they’re in the name of the work we do at FMTY - that we can never thank you enough for!
Warming up those writing muscles
Often we talk about physical challenges that people take on for us (we’ll get to that in a moment) but we also have some incredible writers who have set their own letter-based goals this year to ensure there are more cancer patients reached out to than ever before.
Grace White has written 188 letters so far this year and donated the first 70 Christmas cards we received for our latest campaign! Oonagh Quinn has written 220 cards towards her 600 card target, and Sara Gates has written the first five of her brand new 1000 letter target.
Last week, Suzanna Giera not only wrote 11 letters for our Donate a Letter campaign, she also raised £50 via the Royal British Legion 11/11 Challenge; a beautiful way to remember those lost this Remembrance Day.
This year we've also had amazing donations from Dinah Johnson of The Handwritten Letter Appreciation Society who wrote 100 letters for Captain Tom, and from Erin of Tiny Kisses Cross Stitch who donated 100 beautiful cross-stitched cards.
Alongside these excellent goals, we also have to make a special thank you to Liz Maguire from Flea Market Love Letters who created a “28 for 28” fundraising and letter writing challenge in celebration of her 28th birthday. Not only did she send in 28 wonderful letters, her supporters also helped raise an incredible 1020€!
If you’d like to set your own writing challenge, there’s never been a better time than now with our Christmas Campaign where we’re trying to send 2,000 letters to cancer patients over the festive period! And if you’re looking for new stationery to help you with your writing (who can resist a new letter writing set or pen?!), then look no further than Spotlight Post who donate £2 to us from every subscription box purchased.
There are many miles to cover!
As you may have seen recently, our fearless co-founder Alison is now over the 700 mile mark on her Lands End to John O’Groats 2021 challenge. With two months and 174 miles to go, she’s still very much focused on this year (!) but we’ve already started to hear about new 2022 challenges you're planning!
Guy Emmerson deserves a shout out for letting us know about the Thames Path Challenge 2022 - 2nd Half Challenge he’ll be taking part in September 2022 - now that’s preparation! There are 15 events just like this, around the country, for the 2022 Ultra Challenge Series and we’re very excited that all Action Challenge events can now be used to fundraise for From Me to You. It’s also worth noting that people walk the distances as often as run them!
Along with Alison’s mad challenge, we’re also so proud of the fundraising efforts of Liz Kentish whio raised £331 with her Facebook birthday fundraiser and Pam Gradwell who donated £100 after asking for donations to us in place of birthday presents.
Let’s get together!
We’ve loved the chance to get back together in person where possible this year, and of course to continue to experience letter writing online in our workshops and those run by Letters Connect.
We’ve also been well supported by our community as you run your own events - including this upcoming ‘Festive Feels’ - a warming and reflective writing workshop run by The Happy Post Lady in Northampton on Sunday 12th December. At the time of writing, there is one place left, and 15% of proceeds are kindly being donated to FMTY.
If you’d like to create your own event, please feel free to get in touch.
Hot off the press
As you can see, there are so many ways you can get involved with fundraising and donating, and this weekend we were very excited to hear about some brand new challenges that are being taken on.
Kareena Miller is writing 100 Christmas cards and raising funds via Justgiving, Susan Robinson is writing 26 cards for us using the A-Z of Christmas as her inspiration and Liz Maguire is planning to do the same!
Colleen McCallum is raising money to buy £500 worth of stamps for our Christmas Campaign, and Agnnieszka Wolsoncroft has set up a Facebook birthday fundraiser for us, after running a very successful one last year too!
We just want to take this opportunity to thank you all for your hard work this year. We really couldn’t do what we do, without you.We couldn't do any of our work without our incredible community - that includes you! Whether you've received a letter, written many or just helped spread the word, you've made 2021 that bit brighter.