Alex's Halloween Half Marathon for VIDA

Here are some facts about domestic abuse: - roughly 1 in 4 women in the UK have experienced domestic abuse during their lives. This equates to 4.5 million female survivors of abuse - of those who have experienced domestic abuse, 19% of women have experienced sexual abuse - statistics show that this kind of abuse is still happening If you’ve ever met someone who has gone through domestic or sexual abuse then you know the impact it can have on a person’s life. This can include sustaining physical injuries, developing mental health or emotional problems, having difficulties trusting people, and even attempting suicide VIDA is a voluntary organisation, local to the Sheffield area, which is helping to fight this trend of abuse. They offer therapy and counselling to survivors, hold regular women’s support groups, and run “Parenting After Abuse” programmes for mothers who have experienced abuse. VIDA also offer specialised training on domestic abuse for staff from other agencies I heard about VIDA a couple of years ago and I think they do incredible work with people who desperately need their support. So now I’m going to try to raise some much-needed funding for them by running the Worksop Halloween Half Marathon (Oct 29th). Given that I generally stick to 5–10km runs, this is going to be pretty tough. So please sponsor me and help to raise money for VIDA today! Here’s how your money helps: - £5 pays for a place at VIDA’s women’s support group - £10 covers the cost of childcare during one of VIDA’s Eva sessions - £40 pays for a therapy session to enable someone to work through their trauma Every penny helps, so please give whatever you can to help this cause. The bottom line is that VIDA helps survivors of abuse to make sense of the terrifying things they’ve experienced (or are still experiencing in some cases). With your support we can work towards making domestic and sexual abuse a thing of the past, and help survivors to recover from the traumas they’ve experienced