All the news you missed...
Tiger Trail Bike Ride
26 August 2008
Wendy Dignum and Nick Rush from Ipswich are doing something extra special to raise money for the Matt Hampson StarGaze appeal. It's a bike ride from Ipswich to Leicester Tigers on January 20th, which will be exactly one year since SpecialEffect was launched.
Wendy and Nick, who work for Suffolk Police, are looking for people to join them on the bike ride that has been generously supported and sponsored by Macmillan & Wright with a donation of £5,000. You can join Wendy on the bike ride by contacting her on 07938 423032.
SpecialEffect Director Mick Donegan said " We really can't thank Wendy, Nick and MacMillan & Wright enough for all they are doing to support our work"
Nick, Chris Wright from Macmillan & Wright, and Wendy are pictured here outside the North East Safer Neighbourhood Team office in Ipswich.

SpecialEffect's radio activity
25 August 2008
New SpecialEffect Vice President and Kerrang! Radio Presenter Luke Wilkins is kindly collecting pictures and signatures of famous bands who visit the station and other celebs that he meets! Luke will ask bands to sign a SpecialEffect T-shirt and a Matt Hampson rugby ball that will be auctioned in 2009. Massive thanks to Luke, who is pictured here with fellow presenter and Big Brother winner Kate Lawler.

Luke said "I'm delighted to support such a fantastic cause as SpecialEffect and look forward to helping the charity to help others"
Three Peaks Challenge
12 August 2008
On the 23rd and 24th of August Specialeffect's first ever challenge participants Ross Laman and Danny Cuttell are taking part in the Event Aid Three Peaks challenge. Ross and Danny will be attempting to climb the three highest peaks in the UK: Ben Nevis (1344m), Scafell Pike (978m) and Snowdon (1085m)...... in 24 hours (and that's including travelling between the peaks)! They'll be trekking 25 miles up and down 9,000m of mountains. We've just had this fantastic email from Ross and Danny who have already raised over £300 at http://www.justgiving.com/rossdanny3peaks
Game for a laugh
31 July 2008
After reading about SpecialEffect's fundraising efforts for A Game For Helen, West Oxfordshire comedy promoter Andi Currie generously offered to give the profits from August's Lil Fat comedy club evening in Witney, Oxfordshire.
Appearing on the bill were professional comedians Pat Gallagher, Gary Leonardi and Nick Page, and the evening was compered by Tommy Greeves
Keep on running
25 July 2008
Congratulations to Ed Dorling from Witney (pictured below) who is SpecialEffect's first ever runner. He completed the British 10K in 49 minutes, 29 seconds on July the 5th.

Ed is also taking part in the Great North Run for SpecialEffect and
hopes to raise £500 for our work. Thanks Ed!
Rugby cycle event raises funds for charity
18 July 2008
On 13 June an intrepid group of 16 cyclists powered their way from Worcester Warriors Rugby Club to Leicester Tigers Rugby Club to raise money for Dan James, seriously disabled in a collapsed scrum, together with Matt Hampson who suffered the same fate in an England under 21 training session, and our own charity SpecialEffect.
Pictured below is Martin Corry, the captain of Leicester Tigers RFC, and Tigers Director Lord Digby Jones.

At the end of the day Martin Corry, Lord Digby Jones and fellow Tigers Director Peter Wheeler jointly hosted a dinner to mark the end of the events. The day had started with a Business Breakfast at Worcester Warriors Sixways Stadium when the Event Patron, Lord Digby Jones, Minister of State for Trade & Investment, chaired a Business Breakfast together with local MP Peter Luff.
The dinner, held in the European Suite at Tigers, in the presence of The Right Worshipful the Lord Mayor of Leicester, Councillor Manjula Sood, was chaired by Lord Digby Jones who took questions from the guests and an extremely successful auction reflected the generosity of the guests and sponsors. In the region of £50,000 was raised by the ride, the evening dinner at the Tigers ground in Leicester and the breakfast at Worcester Warriors.
Cameron signs for SpecialEffect
14 July 2008
After meeting SpecialEffect patron Matt Hampson at our Oxfordshire launch, David Cameron was happy to sign a ball that will be auctioned off to raise funds for the Matt Hampson Trust and SpecialEffect.

SpecialEffect on FaceBook
11 July 2008
Join our FaceBook group to see more photos and videos from our events and work!
SpecialEffect at Cornbury
08 July 2008
SpecialEffect volunteers joined the likes of Paul Simon, Crowded House and KT Tunstall at this weekend's Cornbury Festival to raise funds and awareness for our work with a silent auction. Thanks to trustees Caroline and Simon, Simon's son Charlie (pictured below with Mick Donegan), and volunteers Pam, Lucy, Justin, Bill, Sally, Nic, Harriet, Alison, and Mick for all their efforts. Over a thousand pounds was raised from the auction of items including a day with Olympic Horse Rider Mary King, a holiday in France and signed sporting memorabilia. Many thanks to all the people who visited our stand and to Hugh Phillimore the organiser and promoter of the Cornbury Festival.

SpecialEffect launches in Oxfordshire
21 June 2008
SpecialEffect celebrated its Oxfordshire launch at Eynsham Hall on the evening of June 20th. We're particularly grateful to David Cameron for attending and giving the charity his support.

Speaking after the event, Mick Donegan said, "We would like to thank everyone who came to the SpecialEffect Oxfordshire launch last Friday and making it such a successful evening. Thank you, in particular, to young Helen Oakley for coming along and helping us to launch the Helen and Douglas House Games Suite appeal, "A Game for Helen". As we said during the evening, we really hadn't expected so many people to be able to make it, particularly on a busy Friday evening, and we were absolutely delighted that so many could attend, some arriving at the last minute from a very long way indeed. The prize-winner came running through the door, hot-foot from San Diego!"
You can view photos of the Oxfordshire Launch
A Game for Helen: Download the project summary
16 June 2008
You can now download the A Game For Helen project summary as a pdf from the Game for Helen page
Photos from the Stargaze launch
12 May 2008
You can now look at Photos from the Stargaze launch at Leicester Tigers RFC in May 2008.


