It’s been 48 hours since our LimbBo adventure day 2021 and it’s taken us this long to organise our thoughts. To sum up this day is almost impossible but one word keeps coming to mind.
PRIDE
We are so proud of every single one of our kids. I’m including siblings of limb different children and our volunteer ‘kids’ too.
The number of people who said they cried during the day ( We knew putting tissues in the goody bags was the right thing to do) or that they were choked up as a result of watching these kids helping each other, linking little arms, playing with and supporting our babies and younger children. Pride because they tried everything – and I mean everything, archery, cricket, exploding rainbows, Jiu Jitsu, acting… although Layla calmly said ‘I don’t do running’ and carried on painting.
Pride because we watched children make choices, I found one little girl reading a book on her own in the teepee, ‘I’m ok, I’m just reading, I’ll move up if you want to come in’
Pride because they formed teams and bonded – I’ve never heard a noise like the orange team made when cheering at the races. Pride because of the sheer determination in their faces. Proud of the feedback from the kids themselves and from parents who could see their children relaxing and for the first time ever being in a large group where no one asked what had happened to their arm or leg. That’s not to say there wasn’t a lot of arm comparing and laughter along the way.
Proud of the way children embraced new prosthetics – and very proud of Tommy and Lottie for giving back the hero arms even though they wanted to take them home.
To say we are proud of our volunteers and supporters would be an understatement- people who gave up their time to do anything that was asked, from putting up marquees, serving burgers, washing paintbrushes, litter picking, no job was too small and they made an awesome team.
We want to say thank you to group leaders and organisations for their support ( some bailing us out at the last minute) We really hope we’ve not missed anyone from this list.
Amie, Leonie, Connor, Eden, Jamie and Gabbi for the workshops. Koalaa for their support over the last month ( in particular Bryan you are a star for putting up with Jane stressing at you!) and for bringing prosthetics for all the children that could use them, fitting them, altering them …even creating new prototypes for us! For creating goody bags for children who weren’t suitable for one of the prosthetics, your kindness was just above and beyond.
Open Bionics – every child’s dream and aspiration you inspired these kids.
Oxford university and Bold kids for coming along and engaging our families in research for giving them a say in their own future.
Cawthorne Cricket club – what can we say? Thank goodness Woody had a flat tyre two months since and wandered in to your club house … you have been supportive, generous – you did everything and then gave us a donation at the end of the day – you are now part of the team LimbBo family! Even the workman who was fixing the fridge was so impressed by our kids he made a donation. Balloon bugs who created our limbBo sign for free and brought it on the day, the centre of hundreds of photos!
Thank you to everyone who donated to goody bags, Plantlet Culture, Cawthorne mother and toddler group, Cannon Hall farm, Amaze labs, Tesco and Morrison’s community support.
Thank you to the Mayor of Barnsley and to BBC Look North for covering our day and helping us to show people that our kids are awesome.
We do have two special mentions – Bapp for bolts has been our main sponsor since we started. If you watch the BBC video you will see that everyone had a special colour t shirt all of which were paid for by this amazing company – they are our ‘proud sponsors’. ( Bev who is the chairman’s wife is rubbish at putting up gazebos but we will forgive her as half the parts were missing !) we are proud to know you and just so incredibly grateful.
The other special mention is to Walnut Creative. Their found and director Glenn died earlier this year and we were all so sad. However, his company carried on and in honour of his memory wanted to continue to support us. Our favourite videographer,Josh, came long on the day. In Glenn’s memory we created the Glenn Crossland award to present to a child who stood out on the day. If you’ve watched the BBC video you will have seen this young man!
So so proud of you Sonny -mature beyond your years, full of fun and what a role model – the explanation for your award is written below by Adam one of our trustees
It’s in memory of a very close friend of mine who I spent many a year pretending to live out the rock and roll lifestyle in bands with, generally being a fantastic friend. Later down the line as we “pretended” to grow up set up a successful marketing business and was literally one of the first people when the ide of limbBo came about that said “I’ve got this, whatever you need we will make it happen”. He helped with the website, made us thousands of flyers, made posters, banners, did all our adventure day videos and everything we needed, he refused a single penny in payment, he saw the vision and did anything for us off his own back. We lost Glen this year, he was the same age as me and has left a young family behind so it hits close to home not only because he was a friend. He was the kindest person I’ve ever met and I wanted an award in his name that reflected his kindness to others, determination, success and ambition, loads of kids were brilliant today but Sonny was just absolutely out right inspirational with other kids, he helped them learn to love who they are and throughly deserved the award in Glen’s name x
In the words of the song ‘what have you done today to make you feel proud’ every single adult and child at LimbBo day on Thursday could give you a different answer but from everyone at team LimbBo we are so incredibly proud of all of you xx
