In this interview we speak to one of the brains behind 7events, Jitesh Chauhan about why the team decided to raise money for the wonderful chosen charities. Jit started by telling us this ‘Hopefully, I can answer a few of those questions and give you a better understand of the campaign. More so, you will want to join in and help the goal.’
Tell us a little about 7events and the people behind the campaign?
So we’re a growing team of friends and family, all with one common goal – to help our local community, which all of us have at some point been part of. However, the team was not always this big. It started with a car journey to Leicester Royal Infirmary Bone marrow Transplant Unit and a conversation with a member of my family!
Tell us a bit about 7events and how you came up with it
I was taking member of the family to the Leicester Royal Infirmary and we were having a conversation about raising money for the unit he was going to. He wanted to do something for all the support they gave him when he got better. This got me thinking on the way home. I was already planning to do some fundraising. Why not raise money for a number of organisations in Leicester. At the same time, do something to help the community to raise awareness about what these organisations do.
From this, I thought, let’s support 4 charities. These were:
- Joe Humphries memorial Trust
- LOROS
- Bone Marrow Transplant Unit at Leicester Royal Infirmary
- The Teenage Cancer Trust at Leicester Royal Infirmary.
As I wanted to support the 4 charities, I thought we would really need to raise a huge amount of money to make a difference to the charities. I had decided we needed to have more than one event and I knew a number of people who were planning to fund raise. If we pool our activities together we would make THAT difference. To cut a long story short, 7events became a campaign with numerous people coming together
The 7events are:
- Family Health and Wellbeing Festival
- Tough Mudder – Midlands
- Summer Raas and Garba Night
- Prudential Ride 100Surrey
- Cannock Chase 10k Run
- Leicester Tigers away in 1 day
- London Marathon 2017
One of the stipulations of donating money raised to these organisations was to make sure the money was used to purchase equipment. With numerous discussions with the groups, we came up with a shopping list of items we could buy and depending on the need at the time of donation, they may want.
All the charities do great work from supporting patients who are ill to supporting carers. With Joe Humphries Memorial Trust, we wanted to support and extend all the great work they do by purchasing Community Defibrillators to put into a number of areas of Leicester.
The areas were Evington, Rushey Mead, and Oadby.
If we raise more than the purchase cost of the three defibs we could buy more. On top of this, working with JHMT, East Midlands Ambulance Service and Heartsafe, we would raise awareness about SADS (Sudden Arrhythmic Death Syndrome) and CPR. As Steve Humphries (JHMT) once said it was ‘creating a generation of lifesavers.’
Let me introduce to you our team members:
At the time of writing this, we have many participants taking part in the activities.
Tough Mudder – Midlands
We have 2 teams entering this. The first team is led by Mark Deacon from Deacons Martial Arts and Fitness. There are 10 of them taking part. The second team, Mudders in Arms, is led by Nakul Chauhan and includes his friends. I am sure they will succeed in completing the challenge and I know they will raise a lot of money for the 7events campaign.
Prudential Ride 100 Surrey
This I am doing, and you can read about my story about this and love affair with cycling.
Cannock Chase 10k Run
We have 12 team members who are taking part in this. They are: Radhika Chauhan, Dharmesh Odedra, Paven Singh, Bharat Joshi, Jashwina Bhavsar, Chetan Vallabh, Tej Chauhan, Tejal Chauhan, Vanisha Chauhan, Poonam Chauhan, Nikita Chauhan and Nakul Chauhan. It started off as a bit of fun for the runners but now seems to have pick up a bit of competition between them As long as they have fun doing this, then that is all that matters!
Leicester Tigers away in 1 day
With Chet Patel, we decided to organise rowing, running and cycling all day session with the aim to fundraise. We came up with the idea of doing the equivalent distance of Leicester Tigers to all the premiership grounds. This equals to 1,015 miles and will do this in one day!
People can join us and take part. We are looking for people to join us on this challenge if you are a regular athlete or someone who wants to just be part of this. Get in touch with us, you are more than welcome!
London Marathon 2017
Last but not least we have Russell Gamadia running the London Marathon. What a challenge to take up too. He has run this race before in over 4 hours. This time, he is training hard to get under 4 hours. We are all confident he will do this. He is a very determined fella!!
Here is some more information about the other events:
Family Health and Wellbeing Festival
Part of what I wanted to achieve was to be able to help the community. I felt there were a number of issues, especially in the South Asian community, which people felt were taboo subjects like mental health, dementia, Alzheimer’s and substance misuse. Hence I thought why not have an event where people could talk the experts in an open environment and if they wanted to follow up they would have the necessary details to do so. With Anand Chauhan and a number of friends, we decided to arrange this. It is not all serious though, they will be lots for children and adults to do and take part in!
Read more on the Family Health and Wellbeing Festival
Summer Raas and Garba Night
I thought we should maybe do an event which did not exclude the family and make it enjoyable for people of all ages. Hence, we decided to do a Summer Raas Garba Night. This usually takes place late in the year but we thought why not do it in the summer on a light night. With support from local communities, singers and groups the night is coming to fruit. We even have a group from London (Raas Rebellion) support what we do, will be attendance and showing off some of their skills!
The main theme to this though is to raise lots of money for the 7events campaign and support all the great work we are doing. So, please support and donate as big or small as you can. Every little bit helps!!
Make a Donation: https://www.7events.org/donate
Twitter: @7eventsleics
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Website: https://www.7events.org