Sunday 15 August 2010

Ten Pound Pom - Charity Choices

So I've decided who the charities are; Homestart Guildford, Lupus UK, Hughes Syndrome Foundation and Tommy's. Read below and click on the links to find out more and donate! Remember, every little helps, so it doesn't matter if you donate £5 or £50...it all helps!

My mum is a volunteer for Home Start Guildford, they are a charity that help young struggling families. The woman my mum helps once a week has she said that having my mum's help has made such a difference to her life, because not only has it given her confidence and enabled her to get out and do things, but also it has given her a friend. This charity does amazing work, and is run by volunteers who are mothers themselves. It costs Home Start £30 to give a family a volunteer, so please donate generously!

Catherine Lux is fundraising for Home-Start Guildford

Tommy's, the baby charity, is a well known charity for their research into the causes and prevention of miscarriage, stillbirth, and premature birth. 1 in 4 women lose a baby during pregnancy, and they are constantly working to try and lower this number. This is a charity very close to home for everyone, as I'm sure many of you will know people who have lost babies or had to go through a premature birth. Knowing people who have gone through the loss of a baby, I feel Tommy's is a well deserving charity, and they need all the help they can get. After all, no parent should have to lose a child, no matter how young. So again, please dig deep and give generously!

Catherine Lux is fundraising for Tommy's, the baby charity

Edit: 21:30pm

We've just had one of those awful phone calls...you know the one where you can tell something's wrong by the look on your mum's face as she talks to the person on the other end of the phone..the one where the tv gets muted and everyone listens-in wide eyed...the one where as soon as a name is spoken everyone listens in for the next part...the one where as soon as you hear your mum exclaim in shock the word 'dead' your eyes fill with water, your heart beats faster and faster and you feel like you're going to throw up...the one where you run to your room and scream into your pillow...the one where you're filled with regret because you didn't text the person to arrange that catch up you'd been discussing for ages, or you kept reminding yourself to text them to check if they were ok but kept forgetting because other things came up. The one where you know there's nothing to do but to cry yourself into a deep somber slumber, and hope that by morning the nightmare will be over, and your heart won't be so broken.

You get the phone call. And it changes everything. Suddenly this person has gone. You will never be able to talk to them again or see them again...and it feels like someone's punching your heart over and over.

My 3rd Birthday - 1994. 
Grandad, Me and Nakita.
“If there ever comes a day when we can't be together keep me in your heart, 
I'll stay there forever”
Rest In Peace Nakita - Gone far far too soon x


So in memory of my Step-Aunty, who was more like the big sister I never had, I'm also going to be fundraising for Lupus UK and Hughes Syndrome Foundation, so please PLEASE give generously to this charity so that others like her do not have to lose their lives! She suffered from Lupus disease and Hughes syndrome, and died in her sleep in the early hours of this morning at just 36 years old.

Lupus is an auto-immune disease which causes the immune system to attack the body's cells and tissue, resulting in tissue damage and inflammation, thus damaging vital organs and the nervous system. There is no cure and it can be fatal. It occurs nine times more often in woman than in men, yet there is no specific cause.
Lupus UK is the only national registered charity supporting people with Lupus and assisting those approaching diagnosis. They also operate a grant programme for research purposes.

Catherine Lux is fundraising for LUPUS UK

Hughes syndrome is also known as 'sticky blood', and can be fatal if not caught and controlled early. I have chosen to support this charity as I believe people need to be more aware of what Hughes syndrome is and what it does, as it is not a very well known disease. We need to raise awareness, as Nakita's sister Petrina said, 'to stop any other family go through what we've been through'. 

'Hughes syndrome is an autoimmune disorder which can present many clinical features, some of which can be life threatening, including strokes and thrombosis, and it can also be the cause of recurrent miscarriage. The good news is that, once diagnosed, Hughes Syndrome is potentially treatable; the bad news is that, as the condition is relatively new, it often goes undetected or misdiagnosed. With your help we hope to raise the profile of Hughes Syndrome so that we can discover more about its causes, prevalence and treatment.'

So to not only raise awareness of this relatively new and rare disease, but to prevent any other family losing a loved one, please dig deep and sponsor me generously by donating to the Hughes Syndrome Foundation!

You can find out more about the charity from their website; 
http://www.hughes-syndrome.org/index.htm

Listen to Nakita's sister Petrina's radio chat;
http://splashfm.com/splashstory.asp?id=2689

And of course donate;
http://www.justgiving.com/Catherine-Lux


Ten Pound Pom - The Beginning

Yesterday was the day the realisation hit me...that I would have to live off £20 a week, and that would have to include bills, food, fuel, travel costs, going out, entertainment and the ever expensive uni books (they're at least £50 each!). I figured if I put £5 a side each week for bills, then I would have £15 left for everything else. But what about savings? I need to save up to pay for my flight back 'home' ( I say 'home' because I lived there for the last 2 years of my schooling, and I now consider it my second home) to Australia in the Summer...so another £5 a week would go towards that. That left me with just £10 a week for food, fuel, travel costs, going out etc etc. Sugar.
I was at work yesterday when I worked all this out, and felt like I was about to burst into tears. And it was raining. Which I find always makes everything ten times worse!
The thing is, I have led a very privileged life so far, and I only realized this yesterday as I lay on my super kingsize bed sobbing my heart out whilst my Mother told me a few home truths. I really am spoilt and ungrateful.
So, this morning I woke up with a whole new look on my situation, I thought of how I could make good out of a bad situation. So I am taking up this challenge. For the next 9 months of the Uni year, from end of September to end of June, I will do this little experiment, I will live off just £10 a week and blog about it every day to see if a middle class student from Surrey, can really live off just £10 a week. This will have to cover food, fuel, travel costs, books, entertainment and all the other things a 19 year old girl needs in her day to day life. Then I thought, why not make it even better...why not get people to sponsor me to do it and raise money for charity at the same time! I always want to give money to charity, but it's a bit hard when I myself hardly have any money to give. So here is the perfect opportunity to do something to help charities.
Then came about choosing a charity, now this was a hard choice. And I still haven't completely decided so I won't post anything until I have decided for definite.
Basically there are 3 or 4 that I can't choose from, so I'm going to fundraise for all of them on 'JustGiving', and people can choose which one of them they donate to.
So here is the end of my first blog.
I probably won't start this 'blogging' thing properly until I start the challenge, on 27th September 2010. I will be setting up a facebook group, a twitter account and my 'Just Giving' pages a few days before that date.
I do apologize for my poor grammar, it has never been a strong point of mine...and I tend to just use punctuation whenever I feel like it. So you may randomly get '...' or '!!!' or brackets in the middle of a sentence when they really aren't needed.
Anyway, until next time.

TPP x

Ps; do I sign off as Ten Pound Pom (TPP) or Catherine?! Or, do I not sign off at all?