Trafalgar Square- The Fourth Plinth Project

How exciting!

The Fourth Plinth Project will be happening in London over the summer.

They are planning to have lots of people from all over the UK (chosen at random from those who express their interest) standing for one hour each on the Fourth Plinth in Trafalgar Square (where normally there are statues).

People are free to do anything they like (legally!) during their one hour slot we've come up with the awesome idea of someone (or may be even a few people if we can drum up enough interest) standing on there holding a massive organ donor card

Because they want to get equal numbers of people from all over the UK, and because those who enter the ballot will be chosen at random, we could do with getting as many people as possible involved to enter.

All information about this can be found by clicking on these links:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/4838343/Antony-Gormleys-Fourth-Plinth-Trafalgar-Square.html

Here's what you need to do

1. Express your interest here http://www.oneandother.co.uk/

2. After a a random ballot, people who have been chosen to have a go will be notified by email.

3. Then... you need to email us if you're one of the lucky ones so we can arrange to get a giant donor card to you!

If you're up for it, please let us know -- We're all definitely going into the ballot, as long as we don't get the 3am slot!!

More Cake Bake piccies!

Thank you so much to all of you who keep sending us fab updates about how your cake bakes went.

Sammie held a cake sale at her workplace, Imaginative Traveller and together they raised £46.16.

The fab Pick Me Up Offices got high on sugar thanks to Jennie baking hundreds of cupcakes and raised £55.10.

LLTGL Advocate Holly Shaw managed to find time in amongst all her Battlefront campaigning to head off to her old school and raise over £115 from her Cake Bake!

You can read more about Holly's cake bake on her blog.

Don't forget, it's so quick and easy to get your money to us by visiting www.justgiving.com/gvcb

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Building bridges

As part of the remit of our charity, we are always striving to build collaboarative networks with other organizations involved in the care of people waiting for or having had a transplant. Thus, whilst all and sundry were beavering away on their Great Valentine’s Cake Bakes on Friday, our Chairman was busying himself with the important issue of the transition of children from paediatric care to adult care.

GIFT, the Children’s Transplant Charity, arranged a get-together for medical professionals, patients, parents and carers at the Royal College of Physicians with the aim of achieving a national consensus for the transition of care for patients moving from pediatric to adult clinics across the country.

With notable contributions from consultants from Papworth, King’s and Sheffield, as well as medical teams and patients from the Freeman in Newcastle, Harefield, Great Ormond Street and Nottingham, it was a busy and highly productive day.After a series of lectures on the issues and the practices already in place, the conference split into several smaller break-out groups to discuss the various perspectives on transition from the patients’, parents’ and multi-disciplinary teams’ points of view.

The day ended with a large group discussion in the main RCP lecture theatre where the whole conference tried to hash out some general guidelines or statements of intent, which will then be drawn together by GIFT to produce a consensus document which will, we all hope, go some way to ensuring that the often intimidating and worrying process of switching from pediatric to adult care is approached in the same manner by all hospitals on both side of the transfer.

“It was a really interesting day,” Oli says, “We all just hope that it may go some way to avoiding the headaches and stresses that some young people have experienced going through transition.”

More cake-bake fun!

One of our volunteers, the beautiful Victoria Tremlett, had an awesome weekend baking lots of wonderful goodies to raise money for us. Tor, who has cystic fibrosis, was listed for a double-lung transplant in July 2007 after her lung function collapsed to 23% and she became dependent on oxgygen and a wheelchair. For Tor, every aspect of her life is affected as she places her life on hold for the hope of new lungs, emotionally as well as physically.


We were super-proud, therefore, of Tor's heroic efforts this weekend, as she managed to bake about 3 dozen cakes for her sister to sell at her work as a way of raising some vital funds for us.

We think you'll agree that Tor's cakes look spectacularly cute!

The photos that say it all.

5 year old Bethany, laughing but jaundiced, in acute liver failure.

Bethany merely one month later, after her transplant.

Enough said.

Click here to sign the Organ Donor Register.

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First Cake Bake = a huge success!

As you are (hopefully) all aware, this Friday is Cake Bake day!

That's right, on Friday, people all over the UK (actually all over the world as we know there are people in America participating) will be holding cake sales - some large, some small - to raise money for LLTGL.

To kick-start the whole thing off, gorgeous little William Milne who received his life-saving small bowel transplant only a few months ago, held a cake sale in Birmingham Childrens Hospital, where he is currently still residing.

Abley assisted by his wonderful mum Sarah who keeps a blog of her and William's journey here, William tempted all passers by with delicious treats and managed to raise over £40 - a truly fantastic effort.

We are so grateful to the Milne family for their support, even though they are still living in Hospital so many miles away from home.

We cannot wait to hear more Cakey tales and see more pics of your fab efforts!

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Sending flowers this Valentine's? Check this out!

We have some awesome news! Our fab new trustee Matt has been doing some digging about on the interweb recently and found us an almost-too-good-to-be-true opportunity to raise us some extra funds

The lovely lovely lovely online flower company Bunches have set us up a charity microsite on their website, whereby if you purchase flowers through our page it is followed all the way through to the checkout and we receive 10% of the final sale (including VAT)!

With Valentine's coming up pretty sharpish (along with the cake-bake!) we thought this would be a perfect opportunity for anyone who wants order flowers for someone special to consider ordering them through our micro-site as an easy-peasy way of helping us raise some much-needed funds

If you could pass the message on to as many people as you know, that'd be really awesome too!!

Lots of Valentine wishes,

x

We need some help

As we are a tiny, wee charity, Live Life Then Give Life are totally dependent on the generosity of our individual supporters to enable us to keep doing what we do. We manage to get everything done entirely through the generous amounts of free time given by our trustees (most of whom also work full-time jobs) and the hard work of our wonderful advocates and volunteers who all believe that we want as many people as possible to experience organ donation as something magical, rather than heart-breaking.

As we are rather small and short on funds, we're not in a position to be able to hire someone to help take on tasks such as fundraising. However, without funds generated by individuals like you, we cannot carry out the research, talks, presentations, campaigns and support which we need to do to raise more awareness and save more lives.

So....how can you help? If you're short on time then you can help raise some money in a number of ways.

Coming up, we have the Great Valentine's Cake Bake!! By selling your baked goodies in aid of LLTGL you can help us help the thousands of people out there desperately waiting for a transplant that could save their lives. We've got tons of materials to help support you, including:

• A guide on how to organize your bake-sale
• A cute flyer to advertise your event
• A flyer to print out all about LLTGL and the work we do
• Or... you can join the Facebook event to help spread the word!!

Theres also a ton of events coming up that you can sponsor:

• Jacqueline and her team of 99 merry men and women are walking along the Fife coast;
• Alex Halasz is doing the London Marathon for us and the Daniel Courtney Trust;
• Team Ethan are running the BUPA Great Manchester 10k;
• Tom Richardson is doing the Tokyo marathon

If none of these inspire you, why not raise funds in your own special way? You can set up a fundraising page directly through our Justgiving page; or if you fancy something more adventurous like a Himalayan trek, white-water rafting, a cross-continent cycle ride or a sky-dive, check out the things on offer at doitforcharity. Some of the exciting events currently available include a Sahara Trek, a Cuban cycle ride and a Kilimanjaro climb!

If you do want to do something to help us raise money, please get in touch and we can totally help you publicise your event

Lots of love as always

x

ps. a massive thanks to Jac for the cute drawings on the flyers!