**Breaking News** Holly Won!!!

Holly Shaw, our super duper North West advocate, just won the national vinspired SHOUT award 2009 for all of her work raising awareness of organ donation!


Congrats Holly! More news and a full update coming soon!

Love,

New correspondance address

We love recieving mail! If you fancy sending us a card, a letter about your experiences, a donation or just something to say hi the old fashioned way, please use this address:

Live Life Then Give Life
PO Box 583
Epsom
KT179HD

Lots of love,

We love our lovely Tor

Although we talk a lot about the sterling work that our official advocates do for us in promoting organ donation, raising money and generally being superstars, we also have a network of volunteers that sort out our websites, do research about organ donation, help us out with PR work and generally keep things ticking over

Our lovely Victoria Tremlett, who is one of our featured life-stories, does huge amounts for us even though she is currently struggling as she waits for a double-lung transplant. In particular, she keeps us on our toes and generally helps us organize some of the teeny-tiny bits and bobs that come with running a charity. She is also something of a media star, having appeared on BBC Breakfast news just before the Save Jess-tival to talk about organ donation (and managed to squeeze a heck of a lot into a small amount of time!).

This week, Tor was featured in The Saturday Guardian's 'Experience' section. An emotional, moving account of Tor's life as a cystic fibrosis patient, life on the transplant waiting list and her fears of not seeing Christmas, this article brought us to tears with the powerful message about why we will always continue to fight for organ donation

You can read more about Tor over on her blog, which chronicles her wait for a life-saving lung transplant. Please do pop over and say hello and give her a big hug from us

Love,

www.HelpJessBreathe.org

Holly, of Channel 4's Battlefront fame, just emailed us last week with details of a very interesting bit of help she received from the founder of Bebo, Michael Birch!

Holly met Micheal through her mentor, Oli Barrett, during the filming for Battlefront down in London and after emailing him about the Save Jess campaign, he emailed back with details of a viral website to use on facebook and other social networking sites.

The site, http://www.helpjessbreathe.org/ was set up to help people spread the word, so head on over!

Abseil for Life

(Photo credit: AJS Photography)

Last week, our lovely North-West advocate Holly Shaw put an impressive 38-strong team together to complete her abseil challenge down the 100ft Leasehowe Lighthouse on the Wirral. Abseilers included our Welsh advocate Andrea Evans and the always wonderfully enthusiastic Team Ethan!


None of this would be possible if it wasn’t for Holly’s donor and the fact that their family said yes to Organ Donation. Holly says: “I wanted to do a physical challenge to show what a difference this transplant has made to my life....I will be eternally grateful to the donor and their family for giving me this chance at a new life I intend to make the most of my precious “Gift of Life” and I am keen to continue raising as much awareness as I possibly can.”

So far, Holly and her amazing team have raised over £3,500 for us!! There's still time to sponsor her, by popping over to her JustGiving page at http://www.justgiving.com/LLTGL-abseil/

Thanks to all of the brave Abseil for Life team for facing this daunting challenge on our behalf!!

An afternoon at Imperial College

Left-Right: Emily, Dr. Anthony Gordon and Pauline

This wednesday afternoon we were lucky enough to find ourselves at Imperial College NHS Healthcare Trust Clinical Ethics Committee Open Day. LLTGL chair Emily and treasurer Mandy, together with the fantastic Pauline (from our friends the Donor Family network) were invited to present to the committee at a special session on the ethics of organ donation. These kinds of opportunities are really vital to us as a charity, for it is a chance for us to get our message across to the people at the top who can address some of the structural issues surrounding organ donation.

Following presentations from Dr. Anthony Gordon, the Trust's Organ Donor Champion, transplant surgeon Mr. Vassiolos Papalois and the Trust's living donor co-ordinators, it was our turn to work some LLTGL magic with personal stories surrounding transplantation and organ donation.

Mandy started off by showing the LLTGL slide show, which tells of the most powerful aspect of organ donation: those lives that have been transformed by organ donation, those lost and the fear of those still waiting. Pauline then gave a very touching presentation about the donor family perspective. Although she made the point that Donor Families don’t want to be treated as heroes, Emily made the point for, I feel sure, all of those of us who have been lucky enough to have received an organ, that to her (and us) they are heroes because they really have changed our lives.

Emily then gave a wonderful presentation about the reality of life on the transplant waiting list, and the contrast with her life now and, as is her usual style, there was scarcely a dry eye in the house!

Most importantly the feedback from both the clinical staff present and ‘lay’ people reminded us just how powerful it is to hear firsthand experiences of organ donation. Thanks to all of our supporters who share with us their stories, for every single one helps us reinforce why organ donation matters so much.

Love,

An encounter with Phil Jupitus!

How exciting is this!?!? One of our supporters, Pete Franklin, was on twitter when Phil Jupitus tweeted:

"Time 4 the 'cap & cake' challenge. Am now in Stop The World cafe in Leigh and will buy coffee & cake for first 2 people to come up to me"

Despite being tied up, 15 minutes later feeling he had nothing to lose and eager to do something for himself and for us, he grabbed some marker pens, a camera and a SaveJess Tshirt. Amazingly, Phil was still there!

Phil bought Pete a double espresso and they sat down for a nice chat. Phil told Pete all about the comedy work he'd been doing and Pete, bless him, told him all about us and the Save Jess campaign! Phil kindly offered his help, including signing a SJ T-shirt.

Pete's encounter has really made his, and our, day!!