Something we tell people often is that The Bridge and what we do here could not continue without the generosity of others. Donations, volunteers, and funding nearly always come from someone who didn’t have to support us, but chose to do so because they believe the same thing we do. They believe that someone experiencing homelessness deserves long lasting change, and to be treated as an individual with specific needs, not just a problem to be passed through the system.
Debra Cooper believed this too when she single handedly organised a fundraiser that more than doubled her original target!
On the 23rd of December last year Debra, along with the rest of her Friday Swim Squad, took to the pool to swim 10k each in order to raise £1000 for The Bridge. Thanks to the support of her clients and friends, she ended up raising £2,239.
We spoke to Debra earlier this week about the success of her fundraiser and what went into organising it.
"I’ve never organised a fundraiser before, this was my first ever one. I’ve done fundraisers as in a classic fundraiser where I’ve done something organised by a big charity, but for this one I put it all together myself. I’m in a privileged position where I teach a lot of exercise classes and I have quite a few people in my classes and they’re all very generous, so that’s probably how I smashed that target.
There’s eight of us in the swim squad that did the 10k. The swimming class did the challenge, but with my job of teaching exercise classes, I asked those from my other classes to contribute to our challenge. Most people don’t swim that long of a distance, a lot of people will swim 20 lengths, but 400 is the equivalent of running a marathon. So everyone else helped out by donating.
We all enjoyed doing the 10k in a ‘this is a hard challenge’ kind of way. We’ve got a very tight knit group, and we support each other. We did 100 lots of 4 lengths, and we had an abacus! You could see the little beads going across, so it was helpful to see that go down. And if you’re swimming in a group, that makes it helpful too. I don’t think I could do that on my own, you need the moral support for something like that.
I had homeless people in mind mostly because we had a very cold spell in November, and I just thought how do people cope with this extreme temperature? I get up early in the morning to go swimming, and it's difficult when it’s cold, but I’ve got a nice warm house and a nice warm bed to get out of. The fundraiser wasn’t to do with Christmas really, but we did end up swimming on the 23rd as you need a long time to be in the pool to swim 400 lengths, and that’s when we could book the pool for long enough to do that.
I liked the ethos of The Bridge, of trying to get people back into a normal environment. I could see that if you are homeless, it would be a very big challenge. I would imagine some people would find it just totally overwhelming to think that they could get back into normal society again. That’s what I liked about The Bridge and the idea that that was the mission.
I have another personal cause that I’m quite passionate about, which is wildlife. So I could possibly do the next fundraiser for that. But I’m taking a break for now. January is my busy time for teaching exercise classes, so I’ll look towards my next fundraiser in the future."
We think you deserve a break after swimming 10k and smashing your goal! Thank you so much to Debra and her Friday Swim Squad, we truly appreciate your support.
If you would like to set up your own fundraiser like Debra, find our Enthuse page here and click ‘Fundraise For Us’. Have any questions? Email us at kate@bridgeleicester.org, and we can help you.
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