Fundraising at Explorage.com - Cancer Research

Cancer Research UK is such an important charity to me because cancer affects everybody. According to NHS statistics 1 in 2 people will develop some form of cancer during their lifetime. When you take into account the impact on the individual, their families, and their friends, cancer really does affect us all. The good news is that cancer survival rates have doubled over the past 40 years. Consistent progress is being made but improvements to technology and ground-breaking work offer new opportunities to find different ways to prevent, diagnose and treat cancer and improve survival rates even further. Cancer Research UK are helping improve results even faster.

Last year I became aware of Cancer Research UK's Skipping Challenge where they ask people to do 100 skips per day throughout the month of June as part of one of their national fundraising campaigns. It was mid-June when I heard about it, but I made a mental note that 2023 would be the year for me to take part.

So there I was, on an unsuspecting day mid-May, sitting in Explorage.com HQ when I announced my plan to the room and before my brain had time to connect with my mouth I was asking everyone to join me on my fundraising adventure. Luckily for me, I was surrounded by lots of yes's as the Explorage team are the most supportive bunch of colleagues you could ask for! We all went straight online, ordered our skipping ropes and set up our pages on the Cancer Research website.

Within a couple of weeks, it was time to start our skipping. We skipped outside of our office building at M-Sparc on Anglesey, at our homes across North Wales and even on our holidays! We soon learned that children make it look very easy but it was very fun and watching our donations come in and seeing conversations start about the charity made every single skip worth it.

Throughout the month, Cancer Research UK send skippers motivational emails and digital awards to spur us all on, but more importantly, as we hit milestones in our donations we were able to see what that money could afford for patients.

• £100 could pay for a patient's cancer biopsy - early diagnosis is essential to getting the right treatment to patients.
• £250 could buy a special device used to spin blood samples until different types of blood cells separate. Their scientists can then study the different types of cancerous cells to find out more about them. So they can stop cancer in its tracks.
• £500 could run their online forum, Cancer Chat for a day. It's a safe space open to everyone to discuss any aspect of the disease. Cancer is unpredictable, so let's give people affected by cancer the support they need at every turn.
• £1000 could buy imaging software that scientists can use to film cells in real-time. This could help to test potentially life-saving treatments and find the most promising new cancer drugs.
• £2500 could fund the PETReA trial for five days. This trial aims to help doctors decide how best to treat lymphoma as not all patients can take the same drug. Everyone deserves kind cancer treatments that won't impact their long-term health.
• £5000 could fund the Add-Aspirin trial for five days. This clinical trial is investigating whether aspirin could stop cancer from coming back after treatment. If successful, aspirin would be a cheap and readily available intervention that could save lives.
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It has very much been a month of ups and downs (pun totally intended) as we were blessed with a heatwave throughout more or less the entire month of June! As a team, Explorage.com raised over £1000 thanks to the support of family, friends and colleagues, but mostly the support of each other. It's incredible to see what we've achieved by working together.

I look forward to seeing the incredible work by Cancer Research UK continue and I can't wait to see what our next Explorage challenge will be.

.... I did just see a 1000 push-ups in July challenge... 2024 anyone???

Jaqui - Network Assistant @ Explorage.com

JaquiJeffries@explorage.com