A BROTHER and sister from North Baddesley raised more than £4,500 from walking from Legoland to Southampton Hospital and completing the Junior Great South Run.
Nancy Ashley-Potter, aged eight, suffers from a rare autoimmune disease called Eosinophilic Oesophagitis (EoE).
She and her brother Ted, 10, wanted to support the charities that helped her, splitting their profits between Southampton Hospitals Charity and the Eosinophilic Diseases Charity to help raise awareness of the chronic condition.
EoE affects around one in 1,500 people, with too many eosinophils (a type of white blood cell), in the oesophagus causing inflammation and scarring, making swallowing difficult.
READ MORE: Romsey siblings to walk from Legoland to Southampton Hospital
Nancy, Ted, their parents and a group of volunteers started their 58-mile trek from Legoland, in Windsor, at around 10.30am on Saturday, October 7 and finished the walk the day after at Southampton General Hospital around 5.30pm.
Mum Laura Ashley said: “Legoland was really supportive and brought out a Lego character to meet Ted and Nancy which they loved.
“We were so lucky to get amazing warm and sunny weather – which made it a lot easier. The children did an amazing job of advocating for themselves, explaining to people along the way what we were doing and how it was important to them to raise awareness and money for both of our chosen charities.”
Dad Oli Potter said: “We can’t thank all the volunteers our friends and family enough for coming along and supporting us and the children, there was a lot of games, singing, dancing and the odd moan along the way, but we couldn’t have done it without them, the whole group made it what it was and the children were incredible, we are so proud of them and what they have achieved.”
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The hard work didn’t stop there with Nancy and Ted going on to finish the 2.5km Junior Great South Run, in Portsmouth, on Saturday, October 14.
Oli said: “They did so well and tried their hardest the whole way, Ted managed to come in 63rd place out of over 170 boys. Nancy is now interested in joining a running club.”
The siblings raised more than £4,500 for the two charities from their fundraising challenges.
Mum Laura said: “The children are determined to raise more money and awareness for their charities and are talking about what we can do next, we have a raffle coming up in December and all donations will go to both charities. We are already organising our next fundraising event for January.”
For more information or to donate go to justgiving.com/team/teameoe.
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