Just Breathe Cornwall

Just Breathe Cornwall has reached its annual fundraising target and made its first award to a family in Redruth.

The local Cornish charity was set up 18 months ago to help families in the county living with Cystic Fibrosis (CF). It set itself an annual fundraising target of £5,000 before inviting applications for awards.

Sufferer, six year-old Sophie Smith was gifted an Eflow nebuliser to help her breathe easier. Nebulisers are part of a daily routine for those with the life-limiting disease, delivering medicine into the lungs.

The NHS provides nebulisers to CF patients but the models take 20 minutes to deliver each dose of medicine, are really noisy and they need to be plugged in.

The charity’s founder, Vicky Coxhead, from Polgooth says: “Anyone who has ever tried to keep a six-year old still for 20 minutes will know the challenge. Now imagine having to do that twice a day every day – it’s a nightmare. Every time they loose interest and don’t fully inhale they are missing a vital dose of medicine. The Eflow is amazing because it takes so little time, is quiet and is portable – the trouble is it is so expensive.”

The Eflow costs £550.00 with an annual running cost of at least £120.00 a year – that puts it out of reach for many CF families.

The charity has been overwhelmed by the kindness and generosity of local businesses and supporters with fundraising having taken many different forms. One teenager lopped off her long blond locks to raise £500; three runners completed the Manchester Half Marathon raising £1,000; one local author kindly donated the proceeds from her book launch and the charity has benefited from some very flexible friends who gifted the proceeds of two charity yoga days.

There are around 70 families in Kernow with CF. The charity’s ambition is to be able to help them all with equipment and activities to support their physiotherapy. Research shows, the best way for those with CF to keep their lungs healthy and avoid long hospital stays, is to do two hours of intensive daily exercise.

Vicky continues: “Sporting activities don’t come cheap and that’s what we want to help CF families access. Whilst we’re thrilled with the progress we’ve made since our launch, we’re looking to ramp up fundraising support to enable us to help even more families.”

Anyone looking to support can reach the charity at http://www.justbreathecornwall.com on Facebook at Just Breathe Cornwall or Twitter Just_BreatheCF

This event has been postponed! We are teaming up with Treliske for an opening evening around February time.

We are inviting all parents and family members of the Cystic Fibrosis community, in Cornwall, to join us for an evening to have a chat with one another and share ideas, stories and anything you damn well like. We hope the Parents Hub will become a regular occurrence that will offer a place to chat in a relaxed environment with other CF families.

Light refreshments will be provided to those attending, courtesy of Just Breathe Cornwall (JBC).

Date: Wednesday 17th October 2018

Time: 7:30 – 9pm

Venue: The London Inn, Summercourt.

Please be mindful that unfortunately due to one our committee members having Cystic Fibrosis, we recommend children and adults with CF do not attend the evening.

Morgan is well on his way to Manchester City performance training camp this summer.  He tells us it’s all booked for the 19 August and he is busy working out to be at fit as he possibly can be in preparation.  He has sold an enormous amount of dog treats, raising over £100 for Just Breathe Cornwall and has had some amazing donations from kind people who have read his story, giving him the full amount to fund his trip.  Anything he now raises he says will go towards his on going personal training, equipment and travel.  Morgan’s story has reached people far and wide, so far, the furthest we have heard it’s reached is as far as China!  This is brilliant, not only for Morgan but it has also helped raise great awareness for Cystic Fibrosis and has led to us receiving extremely kind donations to Just Breathe, and all thanks to Morgan and his innovate enterprise.  Continue the hard work Morgan and follow your dream!  Thank you to everyone who has and is still supporting Morgan – it’s an exciting journey.  For those that haven’t found Morgan on social media, you can follow his story on Facebook ‘Pasties for Pooches’ Page or on Twitter @MorganCoxhead

We wanted to say a huge thank you to Jay King, Col Booth and Ami-Louise Booth for taking part in the Manchester Half Marathon.  Running in 23 degrees heat was far from easy but they didn’t give up.  They set out to raise £300 but more than tripled that and have raised a whooping £910! Amazing, thank you so much.

May 6th was a glorious day with the sun shining over us throughout.  Sticker 2nd’s played Sticker Legends which was an exciting game.  Aiden, who has Cystic Fibrosis and Autism who was celebrating his 18th birthday, had his dream come true and was a football manager for the day.  He managed the Sticker 2nd’s team along with current manager Roy Boardman and did a remarkable job.  His team listened to what he had to say and they reaped the reward in winning 5 – 1.  The celebrations continued into the evening where everyone enjoyed a delicious paella and danced the night away, listening to a fabulous set from John and Andy AKA The Tregony Teachers.  A grand total of £1150 was raised whilst everyone had a great time.

We were also presented with a cheque of £300 from Gordon Walker, an artist  who draws brilliant caricatures for the news paper each week and gives the proceeds to charity. Thank you Gordon, we are incredibly grateful.

Thank you to Roy Boardman and Gary Warren for organising the teams for the match to go ahead, we couldn’t have done it without you.

Thanks to all the staff at Sticker Football Club for allowing us to use the pitch and the club and for all hard work running the bar all night.

Sunday 6th May 2018 Sticker Football Club will host a celebrity charity football match with all proceeds  going to Just Breathe Cornwall.  All we need now are supporters and celebs!  Please save the date to come and support and if you know any celebs please get in contact with Vicky.

Morgan, aged 14 is a brilliant Goalkeeper and is not going to let Cystic Fibrosis get in the way of his ambition. Morgan is determined to be the first person with Cystic Fibrosis to become a professional footballer. When Morgan went to visit Manchester City training ground a few months ago he heard about a summer school that runs. A week’s residential where you train like a pro amongst Man City’s state of the art facilities. The only downside is that it costs £1200 plus travel. Morgan knew if he wanted to go he’d have to find the money, so came up with the idea of making and selling dog treats! He said, “It seems, everyone in Cornwall has a dog and everyone has a love for Pasties”, so he combined the two- Genius! Morgan is selling them for £2 per bag. Orders went crazy and he’s now sold over 130 bags. For each bag sold Morgan said he would like to donate 50p to Just Breathe Cornwall and has now raised £65 which is an amazing achievement. Even Joe Hart (England Goalie) approves!

If anyone would like to purchase a bag please get in touch. We can arrange some pick up points if need be. As sadly postage cost £2.90 whether one bag is bought or 10 bags are bought. However, if you are outside of Cornwall we can arrange delivery so it would be better to buy multiple bags to save on postage.

Just Breathe would like to invite all parents of children with Cystic Fibrosis in Cornwall to this fabulous event. A time to relax and meet other like minded parents. Relaxation Yoga is for complete novices and no skill is needed. If you can’t make the Yoga but would still like meet for coffee you are still welcome at 10:45am. This is a completely free event and truly hope you are able to join us. Please get in touch and let us know if you can come.

Well, it’s been one year since ‘Just Breathe Cornwall’ was born and I am so proud of what we have achieved so far, however, I am even more excited for what’s to come.  We’ve be lucky enough to receive funds from people who have kindly organised quizzes, raffles, cake sales, non-school uniform days, book launches, sponsored haircuts and of course our amazing charity ball. We have also received several donations via our ‘Just Giving’ page. All of which have contributed to us reaching this awesome target.  I am truly grateful to everyone who has supported us on our first year and on behalf of all the trustees would like to say a massive thank you.  We now have enough funds to register with the charities commissions which is a long process but will in time hopefully enable us to apply to larger companies to source funding.   More excitingly we are now able to open applications to our CF families in Cornwall. Please go to our ‘Grants’ page for more details. Here’s to another successful year.

Pactster have teamed up with the CF Trust to help anyone with Cystic Fibrosis and their families stay active from the comfort of their own home, or from your hospital room. This virtual exercise site allows you to team up with your friends/family or allows you to join like minded communities to take part in live classes together or prerecorded classes alone. This is currently free to people with Cystic Fibrosis and their parents/carers thanks to the CF Trust. Just Breathe Cornwall have created a community on the site which you can join to enable us to get to know one another within Cornwall. However, you can stay anonymous if you choose and use the site to suit your own needs. It would be really great, when you’ve had a go, to leave some feedback so we can establish if this is something the CF community feel beneficial. Hope you enjoy!

Follow the link to sign up