Marathon of Marathons 2010 - PEI Media

The Marathon of Marathons charities
In the footsteps of Pheidippides | Athens, 31 October 2010 10
www.muirmaxwelltrust.com
Ann Maxwell, a co-founder of the trust, ran
the Marathon of Marathons.
What would you give for a good night’s sleep? Among the UK’s 15,000 children
with severe epilepsy, night-time seizures may lead to brain damage and can be fatal.
For parents, it means constant checking and sleepless nights.
Since 2003, the Muir Maxwell Trust has been raising money to provide alarms
and other forms of practical
support for families affected
by epilepsy. But helping
families cope is only part
of what we do. We also
raise funds for vital hospital
equipment and research, and
are committed to increasing
awareness and understanding
of a devastating condition
that affects 70,000 children in
the UK.
Today, we are considered
the UK’s most significant
children’s epilepsy charity raising funds for childhood epilepsy. Our vision is to change
the landscape of paediatric epilepsy in the UK – and beyond.
We have already taken great strides, but there remains a long way to go.
Childhood epilepsy still has a very low public profile, while medical research into the
condition receives only very limited funding. Most worrying is the large number of
families with no access to support – many simply don’t know where to turn.
That is exactly the position Ann and Jonny Maxwell found themselves in 2003,
having wrestled with their son Muir’s severe epilepsy since he was four months old.
Together, they established the Muir Maxwell Trust to help others and, from small
beginnings in Ann’s study in their Edinburgh home, the Trust has now raised more
than £4m.
In an ever-challenging landscape of good causes, the Muir Maxwell Trust
continues to ‘punch above its weight’, changing lives and offering hope. For the
Marathon of Marathons, however, we have a simple goal – one that could quite literally
mean the difference between life and death. For every €500 raised by the Athens
event, we will be able to provide a family with a night-time epilepsy alarm.
The Trust has recently launched its most ambitious project to date – to establish
The Muir Maxwell Childhood Epilepsy Research Centre dedicated to the development
of new treatments for children with severe epilepsy, in partnership with Edinburgh
University College of Medicine. We have pledged to raise £1m in the next five years to
assist with this project.
As we embark on the latest vital leg of our journey, we are delighted to have been
chosen as one of the good causes to benefit from the Marathon of Marathons. The
event has made an extraordinary difference to our unique charity.
www.shinetrust.org.uk
Cameron Ogden, a trustee of Shine,
ran the Marathon of Marathons.
Shine is a UK charity set up to fund and develop additional education initiatives to
encourage underachieving children and young people, from disadvantaged areas, to
raise their academic attainment levels.
Look at the statistical links between economic disadvantage and academic
underachievement. Children eligible for free school meals are twice as likely to leave
primary school completely unable to read or write. As teenagers they will, on average,
gain far fewer good GCSEs than other students. Even those who do well are much less
likely to go into higher education, particularly to top universities.
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