We were thrilled this week when the MoBros of 2020 received a special recognition trophy for raising a staggering £25,142 for the men’s mental health charity, Movember. This also earned them the coveted top spot on the Movember fundraising leader board in the schools challenge and the fourth highest team in the entire country.
The charity campaign, which runs throughout November, has become an annual tradition at Bedford School, with hundreds of boys and staff doing their bit for the cause every year.
Everyone in the school community is encouraged to come together to raise money for the charity, but more importantly to help raise awareness of men’s health issues, such as prostate cancer, testicular cancer and men’s mental health issues.
Every year we join other schools and institutions across the country in the race to compete for that top fundraising spot. This year, despite all the challenges that COVID threw at the boys, they were overjoyed to receive a beautiful wooden trophy in recognition of all their hard work.
Additionally, Upper Sixth formers Henry Warren and Gurkaran Johal received a trophy each for being in the top three individual fundraisers, with Henry raising £5,329 and Gurkaran raising £3,200.
Henry ran an online auction with his father, which included items donated from the school community including a one-to-one session with Old Bedfordian and Northants cricket Captain Alex Wakely (96-07), a tour of Brewpoint brewery and an original oil painting by Director of Art, Mr Croker.
Henry told us, “It was a tough year for fundraising and so it was even more rewarding to receive this trophy. I just wanted to make a decent contribution and the generosity of everyone completely exceeded my expectations. The kindness shown by everyone in the school was humbling.”
The money raised will be put towards some really excellent projects and is especially welcome this year with mental health issues on the rise as a result of the COVID pandemic.
The MoBros were forced to think more creatively as many of the traditional events were unable to go ahead due to the COVID restrictions. However, the boys stepped up to the mark, worked well as a team and kept up the enthusiasm up in a difficult year.
Planning meetings were carried out over Teams, on the phone or held outside. Filming the video and recording the music all had to be done in small groups to ensure social distancing, so it took a lot of coordinating by the boys, but they managed extremely well. Sporting events had to be coordinated in year group bubbles e.g., Aussie rules football was played in Fifth Form bubbles and several boys ran around the field but only within their year group bubbles. Even events such as the auction had to be held online. All peer group teaching had to be done over Teams and so the Upper Sixth form boys had to form small teaching groups and then deliver lessons to Remove and Fifth Form boys virtually.
Susie Spyropoulos, Head of Charities, said, “I am very proud that in a tough year with all sorts of restrictions to contend with, as well as additional schoolwork challenges, the boys once again excelled in this campaign. It might have been easy to take a back seat this year, but instead they rose to the challenge, and their enthusiasm and commitment to take the lead in spreading important health messages to the school community was really commendable.”