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In celebration of our 5^th birthday on 11^th April, we are launching the 5 for 5 initiative and asking our friends to take part in fun challenges throughout April and beyond.  Here are a few ideas to set you off:

Run or walk 5 miles or more. You can set up a fundraising page using BT MyDonate. If you are feeling very adventurous we also have places available in the Royal Parks Half Marathon and Prudential Ride London 100.

During April, in honour of our birthday, nominate 5 friends via Facebook or Twitter to donate £5 to our birthday appeal page. 

Our friends at Lawsons are holding a coffee and cake morning. On Tuesday 10 April, they will serve coffee and cake at all their stores in return for a £5 donation to Spread a Smile. Maybe your company could support us in a similar way?

Give something up for 5 days – screens, chocolate, coffee??!! – and ask your friends to sponsor you or donate directly to our birthday appeal page. You can download our sponsorship form here. 

During our birthday week, we will be visiting all four hospitals we work in, bringing the party and plenty of smiles to lots of extra special young people. We would like to thank all our partners and supporters who have made this possible so far including Pan-n-Ice, Kier, Lawsons, Mad Science, Pop Fusion and Lola’s Cupcakes.

We now make a minimum of 19 hospital visits per month, seeing over 400 patients monthly. Soon we will start to visit the Evelina London Hospital in Westminster, increasing our reach even further. Our VIP trips to theatres and concerts, which we now offer on a monthly basis, are hugely popular with our families, helping them to make positive memories. By taking on a challenge for our 5^th birthday, you can help us continue to provide this vital service to seriously and terminally ill children and help us create some smiles, laughter and light relief at a time when these families need it the most.

Please consider encouraging your company to support Spread a Smile and take up the 5 for 5 challenge. To give you a bit of inspiration, as well as the coffee morning, five of our good friends at Lawsons are taking part in a sponsored wing walk.

For more info or to chat to us about your ideas for 5 for 5, please email info@spreadasmile.org or call us on 020 7482 5191. You can donate directly to our birthday appeal page or download a sponsorship form here.

If you would like to support #5for5 on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram please copy and paste this message and don’t forget to nominate 5 friends to donate to us:

I have just donated £5 to @SpreadaSmileUK, the hospital entertainment charity, to celebrate their 5^th birthday. The charity sends entertainers into 4 leading London hospitals to brighten the days of seriously and terminally ill children and teenagers. I nominate 5 friends (LIST FRIENDS HERE) and I’m asking you to donate £5 to Spread a Smile here.

On Facebook it is easy to set up and fundraise for us for our 5th Birthday on your page. Please follow the instructions below on how to do it.

On your computer:

In the top right corner of your Facebook page on your computer there is an arrow. 

Click to open it and go down to create fundraiser.

Click on Get Started and it will ask you who you are raising money for. Choose charity and search for Spread a Smile.

You can edit the wording and make your own fundraising page.

On your phone:

In the bottom right corner of the Facebook app there are 3 lines, click on them and go down to Fundraisers.

Click on it and it will ask you who you are raising money for. Choose charity and search for Spread a Smile.

You can edit the wording and make your own fundraising page.

We have places available in two challenge events this year and would love for you to join team Spread a Smile. You may want to cycle the Prudential Ride London on 29 July or run the Royal Parks Half Marathon on 14 October.

Prudential Ride London 100 Calling all cyclists. Come and be a part of Britain’s biggest celebration of cycling in the Prudential Ride London 100 on Sunday 29th July 2018, but hurry as places are going in a flash, no doubt as quickly as your wheels could be turning for this race!

The challenging yet ever so historic 100 mile route starts at The Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park in Stratford, takes you through London into Surrey and ends ever so majestically on The Mall, in Central London. Many of the roads on the route will be closed to traffic for this very special occasion.

Sign up now for a guaranteed place with Spread a Smile. The registration fee is £30 and the minimum sponsorship you need to raise is £500 (excluding Gift Aid).

Once you sign up, we will send you a personalised running vest or cycling jersey, we offer fantastic support on the day and plenty of advice on putting the fun in fundraising and details of how to set up your fundraising page.

Royal Parks Half Marathon For those of you out there who may not have organised entering an official Marathon or even Half Marathon quite yet this year, fear not! We have spaces remaining in the Royal Parks Half Marathon on Sunday 14th October 2018. We would love to have you as part of our Spread a Smile team.

This amazing 13.1 mile course starts and ends at Hyde Park, taking you through four Royal Parks, past The Houses of Parliament and Buckingham Palace.

The registration fee is £30 and the minimum sponsorship is £370 (excluding Gift Aid). Sign up now.

Once you sign up, we will send you a personalised running vest or cycling jersey, we offer fantastic support on the day and plenty of advice on putting the fun in fundraising and details of how to set up your fundraising page.

For more information on either of these events, please email events@spreadasmile.org or phone us on 0207 482 5191.

From April 2018, our teams of entertainers will start visiting the Evelina London Children’s Hospital, located next to St Thomas’ Hospital, on Westminster Bridge, bringing the total number of hospitals we now work into 5. Recently we also increased our visits at Great Ormond Street Hospital, going from 2 to 4 visits per month.

The Evelina treats children with all kinds of health conditions. It is the UK’s leading hospital for paediatric heart services as well as a specialist in kidney transplants and dialysis, cleft lip surgery, metabolic conditions, allergy and neurology. The hospital treats 50,000 children each year of all ages; from babies in the womb, through to young adulthood.

We will start by taking one group of entertainers per month, taking our total number of monthly visits across all 5 hospitals to 20, and we hope to be able to increase this in the not too distant future.

Lucy Jackson, CEO, said “It’s wonderful to be able to add a new hospital to our current offering. This gives us the opportunity to see even more children and teenagers who are seriously ill. We are very excited to bring our wonderful teams of entertainers, consisting of magicians, fairies, singers and face-painters to The Evelina to spread even more smiles.”

Recently we increased our monthly visits at Great Ormond Street Hospital from two to four a month. We now take 28 entertainers per month across three visits. Talia, who visits with Cassie the therapy dog, recently underwent advanced training so she now visits GOSH monthly too with Cassie, a six year old Cavapoo.

Talia said: “Visiting Great Ormond Street Hospital with Cassie has been one of the most amazing experiences for me. These young people that we visit are by far some of the bravest people I have met and inspire me each time we go to GOSH. My favourite part of going into the hospital is seeing children that have met Cassie before, watching their faces light up as they catch a glimpse of her and hear them shout out, ‘Cassie’ as if it’s their best friend. It’s such a simple thing that we do, yet it has the most profound reaction – I feel so lucky to watch it happen.”

Jamie Wilcox, Head of Volunteer Services at Great Ormond Street Hospital, said: “We think your Spread a Smile team are incredible. We couldn’t do without you. The patients and families rely on the expertise and professionalism of your entertainers and experienced team. We only wish you could visit GOSH more often than four days a month. The difference you make to the patients and families you visit is outstanding. Thank you Spread a Smile for making such a difference.”

The hugely talented Marina Constantinou, Spread a Smile’s resident face-painter, artist and finance manager, has recently added to her repertoire to help take the fear out of radiotherapy for young cancer patients in London, by hand painting their radiotherapy masks.

It is compulsory for patients undergoing radiotherapy, to wear mesh, harsh-looking masks which cover the child’s entire face and can also stretch all the way over their shoulders too. Once the patient is lying on the radiotherapy bed itself, the masks are then fastened to the bed to hold the patient in place. This can be a terrifying and traumatic experience for any person, let alone a child. So, artist Marina offered to personalise each mask for every child requiring treatment, thereby helping to remove an element of fear and spark an element of interest and fun at a time when everything is so daunting and terribly scary.

Having worked closely with Laura Walters, a Play Specialist at University College London Hospital, Marina inquired as to the type of paints and technicalities appropriate for the masks and for the treatment itself, and discovered that water based acrylic paints worked best and were in no way detrimental to the patients or the effectiveness of the treatment. Having had every aspect approved and checked by UCLH, Marina excitedly set to work creating the most magnificent designs. Marina now regularly pops along to UCLH to design masks to a child’s specific requirements.

From Sylvanian Squirrels, to Spiderman, Minions, Manchester City, Yoda and Unicats, the list of designs so far has been very varied. Marina aims to speak directly to the young patients and their parents in advance of their treatment, so that each request is taken into account and noted before she sets to work. Some children have even asked for their names and start dates of treatment to be painted onto the masks too.

Marina said “My intention is to make the masks truly personalised and turn them from looking cold, terrifying and austere, to almost looking like a piece of fun dressing up attire. From the feedback I’ve had so far, I know some of the children have accepted their treatment more readily and have not been so fearful of wearing their mask.”

Currently we offer this service at UCLH.

We are delighted to be able to reveal our new logo to you, just in time for our 5^th birthday.

Five years since we launched, we decided it was time for a refresh and update of our logo. We will launch it officially on 9 April, as we start a week of birthday celebrations at Great Ormond Street Hospital, University College Hospital, St Mary’s Hospital and the Royal London Hospital, but we wanted to share it with you first.

Lucy Jackson, Spread a Smile CEO said; “We were all agreed that an update to our logo was needed and we very much wanted it to be an evolutionary process. Our existing logo is well recognised in the hospitals by children, parents and staff alike so it’s important that we retained some of the original features in the new design. We have done this by keeping with the blue and pink and the ‘stick people’, who still feature prominently. We are sure that our new logo, with it’s colourful and friendly design, will be as popular in the hospitals as the old one and will carry us very well into the future.”

We would like to say a huge thank you to Rhiannon Williams, Katie McCormick and Melissa Gleed, part of the design team at BlackRock, who have designed our new stationery and marketing materials completely free of charge. We would also like to thank the very talented James Daniel, a Cardiff based copywriter who is undertaking copywriting for us on a pro bono basis. Throughout this process, we have been lucky enough to call on their support, advice and expertise.

If you would like to receive our new logo to display on your website etc., please email simone@spreadasmile.org.

We are delighted to announce that Lucy Jackson has been appointed Chief Executive of Spread a Smile. Lucy joined the charity in February 2017, initially as Director of Strategy and Communications and was appointed CEO in January 2018. She brings a wealth of experience having previously worked as Director of Communications at Teenage Cancer Trust and music therapy charity Nordoff Robbins and before that at PR agency Weber Shandwick.

Lucy will work closely with charity co-founders, Vanessa Crocker and Josephine Segal, who will take on the role of co-Chairs.

Josephine and Vanessa said: “Lucy has had such a positive impact since joining the organisation 12 months ago. We are delighted to be working together with her to get the charity in the best possible shape for the future and to help us grow and develop to meet the challenges ahead. We are all committed to retaining the charity’s personal touch, giving the best possible service we can to the young people and their families who we support in hospital.”

Lucy said “It’s an honour and privilege to be part of Spread a Smile, working in partnership with Josephine and Vanessa, two inspirational people who have done the most incredible job of getting the charity to where it is today. I am lucky to have joined a dedicated team and we have an exciting and important job ahead to ensure we are brightening the days of as many seriously ill young people as possible.”

We are also delighted to announce that Louise Jacobs has joined our trustee board. Louise is currently involved in a number of not for profit organisations as a trustee and advisor, both for national charities and some smaller local charities. Previously, Louise has been Chief Executive of a community and cultural centre.

Josephine and Vanessa said “We are delighted Louise has joined our board of trustees, bringing significant third sector experience. We are grateful to have Louise on board during a period of development and growth. We know she will really be able to help us.”

Louise said, “I am absolutely delighted to have become a trustee of Spread a Smile. The charity does amazing and valuable work and to be part of that is very humbling. I am excited to have become a member of this incredible team and hopefully add value to this outstanding organisation.”

Louise is pictured here (on the far left) with our other Spread a Smile trustees, from far left, Paul Godfrey, Paul Crocker, Josephine Segal, Vanessa Crocker and Richard Segal

Jez Allinson, a dedicated officer of 20 years with the Royal Air Force, is now a record-breaking, Marathon running, Star Wars Stormtrooper, know as “The Running Stormtrooper!”

This year, as well as running the London Marathon in April, fully dressed as a Stormtrooper, on May 17^th, Jez will run a whopping 100km (62 miles) in one day, dressed as his alter ego, the Running Stormtrooper, all the while raising funds for Spread a Smile and Make a Wish.

He first heard about Spread a Smile after watching Children in Need in November as he watched the very emotional film about a wonderful little girl called Vanessa Moss, who was in Great Ormond Street Hospital for treatment for Neuroblastoma. Vanessa went through exceptionally lengthy hospital stays and treatment and loved the entertaining Spread a Smile visits as they helped to take her mind off her treatment and how she really missed her two sisters.

Jez said, “I thought that I was ready to hang up my Stormtrooper costume. But then I watched and learnt about Spread a Smile on Children in Need and instantly I knew that I had to do more.”

To ensure that all of the 100km mileage can be safely run in one day, Jez will begin his almighty run at midnight around the Pinewood Studios complex until the sun comes up, and once daylight approaches, Jez will be running once again around Black Park.

As a result of all of Jez’s really incredible fundraising efforts for both Spread a Smile and Make a Wish, Jez has decided to beautifully call this ‘mission possible,’ Make a Star Wars Wish and Spread a Smile.

If you want to sponsor Jez, you can do so here

And you might also consider joining Jez on a virtual run to help raise even more money for Spread a Smile. Run or walk 1 mile, 5 miles, a marathon or 100k. You can sign up here, choose how far to run and when, then start raising money. You can set up a fundraising page using BT MyDonate and then all you need to do is prove that you’ve gone the distance using a fitness tracker or app and you’ll be sent a medal in the post. You may want to consider running the 5 miles, to celebrate Spread a Smile’s 5th birthday! Read more from Jez here about why he set up the Virtual Run. 

We caught up with Jez to find out how the Storm Trooper obsession started.

Having spent so many years training with the RAF, Jez was already super fit, and in 2015, he decided to run the London Marathon and raise money for the wonderful charity CLIC Sargent. After this fantastic experience, Jez caught the “marathon bug” and by August of 2015, he decided that he had to run again in 2016, but this time, up his game and do something slightly different in order to gain further support, awareness and sponsorship.

This is where the idea of running the 2016 London Marathon, dressed as a Star Wars Stormtrooper, was born. Jez has been a massive Star Wars fan since the age of 5. For this particular marathon, Jez decided to support the wonderful wish granting children’s charity, Make a Wish.

Jez set about finding himself a full Stormtrooper armour and contacted a friend who works for a Star Wars favourite, Jedi News, who in turn, further put him in touch with a contact from UK Garrison. They kindly lent Jez a fantastic full costume and from the moment Jez received it, his training fully “Stormtroopered up” began in earnest!

Whilst training in Jez’s local village, naturally in full Stormtrooper costume, he was caught on camera pounding the pavements. Videos of Jez fully “Stormtroopered” went viral on the site LAD Bible, which in turn attracted a massive 2.1 million views! Well, it’s not often that you see a Stormtrooper running through your village, is it?!

During Jez’s successful training, he decided to write to Pinewood Studios, the home of Star Wars, to ask for permission to pose in costume outside their main gates. Permission was duly granted and Jez’s relationship with Pinewood Studios began.

Thankfully, the 2016 Marathon Day went incredibly well and Jez completed his almighty 26 mile challenge in 5 hours and 26 seconds, a real achievement when you understand the enormous challenge of running in the full costume.

Jez’s devotion to The Stormtrooper and marathon running continued further in 2017, which also coincided with The Star Wars 40th anniversary…when he ran both the London Marathon and his own planned 40 mile run.

In the London Marathon that year Jez was awarded the Guinness World Record for the fastest person to run a marathon dressed as a Star Wars character. Jez’s running time was an outstanding 4 hours, 59 minutes and 12 seconds. Shortly afterwards he ran 40 miles around Black Park, ending at Pinewood Studios. An achievement seriously out of this world!

Following so many marathons, training programmes, smashing records and targets, raising thousands for charity and spending countless hours pounding the pavement, Jez had thoughts on saying goodbye to his Stormtrooper outfit but was then introduced to Spread a Smile via Children in Need.

Everyone at Spread a Smile is so incredibly grateful to Jez for all of his amazing efforts, his time, his care and his dedication and we wish him so much love and luck for the massive challenge ahead. We are certain that the Running Stormtrooper will be triumphant once again and Jez, “May The Force Be With You!”

Two incredibly brave, medically minded young men, Jonathan Benton and Sanj Patel, have decided to take on the enormous personal challenge of climbing Mount Kilimanjaro on March 5th 2018, whilst raising funds for Spread a Smile.

They both wanted to take on a significant task which involved travel and also a great experience. Well, climbing Mount Kilimanjaro will certainly cover both of those wishes! They both completed the tough 3 Peaks challenge in 2015, however it was only over a 24 hour period, not quite as long as this climb will be!

They were already two strong, fit young men, however, they have significantly upped their training regimes to cope with their climb ahead, which now involves running with a 10kg weighted jacket on, plus high intensity interval training and loads of squats and lunges too! Wow!

Both Jonathan and Sanj were introduced to Spread a Smile by a mutual friend, and both instantly knew that it was, without doubt, the charity that they had to support. Sanj is a Consultant Anaesthetist and Jonathan runs a Medical screening company and both immediately saw the relevance and incredible help that Spread a Smile provides to very sick children and their families, at a time when they most certainly need it.

Although understandably, a little apprehensive about the huge challenge ahead, both Sanj and Jonathan are feeling very positive, well prepared and determined to succeed… despite a few concerns about the altitude sickness and the goal to reach the summit at the heady heights of 5,895m! They always manage to spur each other on, so we at Spread a Smile are sure that this challenge is no exception.

As Jonathan says “The different climatic zones, the scenery and the sense of achievement which we will both have once we have completed this mammoth challenge will totally make it all worthwhile. If we can raise a lot of money for Spread a Smile simultaneously, then we will have both managed to have ticked many items from our bucket list! We will definitely smile once we reach the top and we hope that our smiles help to spread more smiles to those children who are so deserving in hospital.”

Please click here if you would like to sponsor Jonathan and Sanj