Help Izzy Get A Handcycle

Hi! My name is Chrissy and I’m here fundraising for my good friend Izzy. Izzy is a 26 year old girl living here in Fife, her personality is larger than life and she is constantly going out her way to help everyone she can. Unfortunately Izzy has conditions such as Ehlers-Danlos syndrome and CRPS, a combination of these, and an injury to her spine in 2021 shortly after her graduation from St Andrews University,

has caused her to become partially paralysed from the waist down, and since July 2021 has been permanently in a wheelchair.

Izzy has never let the chair define her, it has never stopped her from living her life and this is one thing I truly admire about Izzy.

She was one of the 30 Under 30 Women, with the Young Women Movement, who were picked for their efforts in community work supporting women and non binary people. Izzy has an absolute thrill for life, before being in

the chair she was an athletic young girl, who loved to cycle. Izzy uses a hand cycle (a piece of equipment that attaches to her wheelchair, in which she uses her hands like pedals to move the chair) it is a great form of exercise for Izzy, and it brings her a piece of her life before the chair. Unfortunately the other week Izzy was going from her house to see some friends (like every 26 year old can) and a 400yard sign had not been weighed down with sandbags on a cycle path and had blown over due to storms we had, Izzy never saw it until it was too late and came off her chair and ultimately broke her hand cycle. Some amazing ladies stopped to help her up and the paramedics took her home. Now Izzy is without her freedom, she uses her hand cycle as a way of exercise and uses it for her social life in a way of getting places. She was also planning on doing a charity cycle from coast to coast (st Andrews to Glasgow) in memory of her best friend Kate who would of been turning 25 this year and to raise money for Papyrus, a Suicide Awarness charity. Hand cycles are not cheap, they are around £4.5k-£5k for one for her chair but to Izzy it’s not about the money, it’s about the freedom it brought her and the life it brought back to her. This is why I am asking for help from our community to bring back Izzy’s sense of freedom and independence.