Over the last five weeks ‘Team Eden’ have walked, run, cycled, canoed and even danced their way for 7,000 miles, and raised over £5,000 in the process as part of the Motor Neurone Disease Association’s #Mission5000 fundraising campaign.
As ‘Team Eden’, the 13 staff from Eden Rivers Trust (a river conservation charity based in the Eden Valley), with the support of immediate families and some of the charity’s trustees, accepted the #Mission5000 challenge to cover a mile for every person living with Motor Neurone Disease (MND) in the UK.
A couple of tough group challenges helped get the miles up and pushed the team beyond their comfort zones. These included walking / running 21 miles along the Ullswater Way Trail and cycling the length of the River Eden – 67 miles from Source to Sea.
Elizabeth Radford, CEO Eden Rivers Trust explains why they got involved: “Not only was it good for us to support this incredibly important charity for MND care and research; but also to support the staff whose relatives are suffering from this awful disease. Every staff member (and several Trustees) threw themselves into this physical and fundraising challenge and I’m delighted that we were able to smash both our original 5,000 mile and fundraising targets.
“It’s also helped to keep the team together whilst working apart due to Covid-19 restrictions. The #Mission5000 WhatsApp group has been a constant source of amusement and a daily morale boost, as we shared our activities, calorie consumption and our various aches and pains! It’s a great cause and we would encourage other work teams to get involved next year.”
Motor Neurone Disease (MND) is a fatal, rapidly progressing disease that attacks the nerves that control movement, so muscles no longer work. It can leave a person unable to move, eat, drink, speak, and eventually breathe. MND is life-shortening and there is currently no treatment and no cure. MND kills a third of people within a year of diagnosis and more than half within 2 years.
Sadly, several the team have been personally affected by Motor Neurone Disease.
For team member Tania, whose mum was diagnosed with MND in January, Mission 5000 felt like the perfect way to do something positive in the most challenging of times:
“I am so proud and humbled by the commitment of my team-mates in putting in the miles, working through the pain and discomfort to raise a lot of money for the MND Association. We all have legs, arms, lungs and voices that work and our discomfort has been short-lived, unlike that of our loved-ones who will lose, or have already lost, their lives to MND.
“Whilst what we have raised won’t help save my mum’s life – it’s too late for her – the support and generosity of people has given her such a boost. We hope that the money we have raised can help with funding the development of treatments and a cure for this most cruel of diseases, that steals people’s lives in the most awful of ways.”
You can still support Team Eden. Visit their Just Giving page to find out more about their travels and donate: https://www.justgiving.com/fundraising/team-eden-mission5000
