Adam's Running The London Marathon for Smile Train

Hi, my name’s Adam and I’m running the London Marathon on the 26th of April next year, raising money for a charity that is so special to our family – SmileTrain – which helps children born with cleft lips and palates. For those who know me, I haven’t been the fittest of people these past few years but I’m committed to the cause and have been training hard six days a week for the past four months (and will continue to train) to ensure I make it over the finish line next year!

In 2006 our elder daughter Imogen was born with a unilateral cleft lip and palate. We first found this out during a scan when my wife Philippa was six months pregnant. We were all terrified but from that moment onwards we received the most amazing support and guidance from the NHS both emotionally and through the (numerous) operations and treatments that were to follow. Imogen has had five major operations including: lip revision surgery at 13 weeks-old, palate surgery at 7 months-old, nose surgery and 2 bone grafts from her hip to her gum. As you’ll see from the photos she’s a beautiful, healthy 12 year who has benefited immensely from the help of the NHS.

Unfortunately, many people in lots of countries around the world aren’t as lucky as we’ve been in having access to the first class medical care required and this is where SmileTrain comes into the picture. The charity aims to provide a sustainable approach to solving the cleft lip and palate problem – they train, fund and empower local medical professionals to provide free repair surgery to their own communities – completely awesome!

So what does it cost to transform a child’s life? To help with eating, breathing, hearing, speaking and enabling them to smile? £150 per life changing operation. So, soak that up – for £150 – a child’s life can genuinely be transformed just as it was for our Imogen. We want to help SmileTrain help lots of other children smile too!

Checkout some stories where SmileTrain have made a life changing difference by clicking on this link: https://smiletrain.org.uk/stories

To help me get the word out, feel free to share my link to your Facebook Timeline or anywhere for that matter! Kylie Jenner is the SmileTrain Ambassador, so if anybody reading this page could help tap her up for a page share or donation that would be kinda cool!

My aim is to raise at least enough money for 35 smiles so – with my hard work in training and your kind donations whether great or small – let’s make a massive impact together for these kids!

Thank you for reading our story and for your generosity.