Help 4 Herbie - Wheelchair fundraiser challenge

UPDATE (10th July 24) - The wheelchair was finally delivered today!! It is absolutely fantastic and Herbie loves it. It seems to be really solid and good quality, but light and easy enough for Herbie to use independently.

Thank you all for your donations, this will really help his life and expand his independence!!!

Sam & Herbie

UPDATE (16th April 24) - Thanks to everyone who has been involved and contributed so far, the March challenge was a fantastic success with over 100 participants across 13 teams! The current target has been amended up to £10,900 for the following reasons-

I now have a quote from the chair provider that includes all of the various modifications Herbie needs, the total is £10,055.

The remaining £845 accounts for the gofundme platform costs (basically a donation of £10 equates to £9.23p in actual money paid to the fundraiser, because we are not a registered charity).

Even if we do not hit the latest target, I am over the moon to say that the money raised so far will get the wheelchair and most modifications! The battery powered front wheel (£3,800) can be ordered separately at some point in the future.

Hi, my name is Sam, and I am fundraising for my son Herbie.

Herbie is 6 years old and an amazing imaginative and charismatic boy; he loves Lego, Spider-Man, play-dough and routinely beating me up! He is in every way a perfect angelic (but hell-raising) 6 year old!

In 2021 we received the devastating news that Herbie has a muscle-wasting disease called Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy (DMD). DMD is a very rare disease (in the whole of the UK, only around 2500 people have DMD) and it is caused by a genetic mutation that prevents the body from producing a protein called dystrophin. Dystrophin acts like a shock absorber when muscles contract – without dystrophin, muscles become more and more damaged and weakened. Over time, children with Duchenne will develop problems walking and breathing, and eventually, the heart and the muscles that help them breathe will stop working. Duchenne is an irreversible, progressive disease.

The purpose of this Gofundme page is to raise funds to buy Herbie a good quality wheelchair that will last him for the next 5-6 years and help to maintain his quality of life for as long as possible. All funds collected will be applied toward the wheelchair and a number of modifications / enhancements.

Right now, Herbie has a basic wheelchair that he uses when his legs get tired. Over time he will become more reliant on a wheelchair, and later in life he will switch to a powered chair and use it full time. The NHS are fantastic and have been so supportive during this period but with their limited funding, Herbie is only supported with the most basic of equipment. His wheelchair today is adequate, he calls it 'Speedy', and his friends love the flashing LEDs his Grandad and I glued on! But it would not work on the beach or in the woods which really limits where he can go. It is also quite heavy, which will limit the amount of time he can be independent and self-propel.

Any Gofundme donations will be gratefully received, but to help get to our goal and to raise further awareness of DMD, we are running the Help 4 Herbie Challenge in March 2024.

The Help 4 Herbie Challenge –

This challenge was for volunteers to come together in teams, and for a full month, starting on 1st March (International Wheelchair Day) for each team to cover 1400km (the equivalent distance from Land’s End to John O’Groats).

They achieved this by any self-propelled means, such as walking, cycling, rowing etc. At the end of each day, the teams submitted their collective distances and we tracked their progress on the Help4HerbieChallenge website. We all had a lot of fun, great banter, and (for some of us) managed to stop being couch potatoes for a month!

You can visit the Help 4 Herbie website where you can learn about Herbie, DMD and check out Help 4 Herbie Challenge.

Thank you to everyone from the bottom of my heart for your support and donations – it means the world to us and will be so vital in helping Herbie and to his quality of life.