Homeless World Cup

[patteam]

Hi ALL, hope life is good for you? A few ex homeless guys are currently walking from London to Endinburgh in order to raise funds to send players from all over the world to Rio for this years Homeless World Cup. If any one wants to log onto Facebook and check out my group page it has all the info on there and tons of info on homelessness etc..... our fb name is Patteam Fareham....check it out and help the homeless of the world live the dream,,,,,,cheers...Gray

[beatonthestreet]

In London on the 12th July four of us began taking the first steps of the London to Edinburgh 'Road to Rio' fundraising walk.

Scott Marshall, myself, Darren Lavin and George Parolalista managed to raise £211 shaking buckets and with online donations from Bela Nascimento, Monika Henter, Michael Wynne, Graham Ablett and Ian Mountford.

Scott joined us for the London stage of the Road to Rio and his hard work leading up to the start of the walk raised over £600 towards our target of £2500.

In Luton, George came into his own, with the help of Phyl from SignPost1 and local entrepreneur Nadeem, he was able to pull in £285 in cash (with no online donations counting towards the total)... this is still the record for a days fundraising and will be extremely hard to beat!

The next stage was Leicester - while George tried to get us linked in with local business and Leicester City FC, myself and Darren made our way into the town centre to pitch up and shake those buckets! In the meantime George was introduced to a young homeless woman by the YASC centre who wanted to get back into football - he is now supporting her efforts to join a local club and represent England at the Homeless World Cup in Paris 2011.

We were sadly hit with a hammer blow when George's knee finally broke down during the walk in Leicester. To those of you that don't know, George's company, George Alexander Group, provided the project management support and mentoring to my Streets Revolution homeless street soccer project in Oxford as well as the full event planning system and support for our Road to Rio walk. Originally there were six walkers and George could not come due to needing potential surgery on his injured knee.

When it transpired that only myself and Darren Lavin would be making the whole journey alone, George took time out from running his business to support me in raising the funds and profile of the event. Check out the photos where he even managed to get Ken Livingston and Ed Ball to sign the flag and pose for a photo.

Since raising over £500 in 24hrs with George and Scott's help, it was left to just me and Darren to push on to Nottingham and Manchester these last two days where we've struggled to raise £50 in each city but we have made some wonderful connections and inspired organisations to develop the use of sport to engage and support homeless people.

We would like to thank George for all the energy and commitment that has been so inspiring to us and the work he continues to put in to help us reach the target - we are now less than £1000 away from the dream.

If you would like to see how far we have come and who has helped with donations check out www.justgiving.com/jon-regler - if you would like to join the names of people making this a reality then please consider making a donation.

Next stop LIVERPOOL!!!!

[beatonthestreet]

A photo of the guys in Liverpool.........................

[Alley cat]

Good luck with your fundraising and i hope george gets better soon .........

[beatonthestreet]

Massive respect to this crew!!
THEY DID IT!!!!!

from one end of a country to another takes some doing...

BIG respect to people, I am proud to call friends......

[patteam]

fantastic achievment Jon and Darren,,,,really proud of you guys.....now get them feet in to soak.....lol....well done guys and all supporters...Gray