Category: Events

LONDON MARATHON 2020

The UK’s coronavirus lockdown forced April’s London Marathon race to be delayed for six months this year. That meant six more months of training, six months of uncertainty about how the race would take place, and six more months of frustration for our runners – it was far from ideal.
Our runners would no longer be able to run their marathon on the iconic route throughout London, past some of the amazing monuments, with a crowd of people cheering them on as they went. Instead, our runners would be running the marathon on a cold and rainy October Sunday morning, with only family and friends to cheer them on at different points during their routes. Along with 45,000 other participants our runners Callum and Gemma ran the marathon (26.2 miles, or 42km) at a time and place of their choosing on Sunday, logging their progress on an app to make their time official and secure a much-revered medal.

If there was one advantage to the marathon being completed in this format, it was that people from around the UK, and across the world, could make their front door the start and finish line of the race this year. 

Gross donations to the Virgin Money Giving platform were down £25m between March and April this year compared with the same period in 2019. We are so proud of our runners for raising over £3000, it hasn’t been an easy year to fundraise and was another challenge for them to face. 

Both of our runners absolutely smashed their virtual marathons, and we are so proud to have such inspiring people raising vital funding for us. 

Callum and Gemma both had different reasons for choosing Pathway Project as the charity they would support for this year’s Marathon. Gemma is Kathy Coe MBE’s daughter-in-law and knows first-hand the work that Pathway Project has done over the years, and Callum is April from our Community & Outreach team’s brother.  

Callum said “When the opportunity to run the marathon on behalf of Pathway Project came up I was thrilled to be able to run for such a fantastic and ground-breaking local charity. I’m so happy that the funds I have raised will be going towards providing their fantastic services in the Lichfield & Tamworth boroughs.’ 

We are so proud of Callum and Gemma for completing the first virtual London Marathon despite all the obstacles that stood in their way in the build-up. They both did an absolutely fantastic job and really put their all into every minute. 

Thank you. 

Knock on the door number 4!

October saw us host our first-ever bingo night, what has taken us so long? Fun was had by all! We raised a ‘top of the shop’ amount of £1314!

We had six rounds: booze round, foodie round, choccy round, pamper round, fun round and a mystery round. We managed to get our hands on some amazing prizes on offer and even had a gift donated by the talented Katherine Kelly one of our honorary patrons.

Thank you to everyone that donated prizes to this event, you helped make our first bingo night one for the books – without your help, this event would have not been possible.

Keep your eyes down for our future bingo events!

Merry Christmas all! As you can imagine Christmas is an extremely busy time for all the staff at Pathway, just call us Santa’s elves – rushing around behind the scenes organising gifts and trips for our women and children.

It may come as a surprise to a lot of you, but Christmas is many of the staff’s favourite times to be at Pathway. We are overwhelmed yearly by the generosity and kindness of strangers, and we work round the clock helping to make positive memories for the people we support.

This year we have been so overwhelmed by the kindness of others, you have no idea what this means to the women and children we support – and although they might not be able to thank you to you in person we can say thank you on their behalf.

• Christmas fundraiser at Debenham’s.
• Melbourne Café hosting a staff onesie day – comfort is key when serving coffee after all!
• 7^th Lichfield Rowallen Cubs made delightful Christmas boxes for the children in our refuges.
• Burntwood Lions provided a magical trip for the children to see Santa.
• Tracy didn’t get to go wild in the aisles, but Tesco did donate an amazing trolley full of Christmas goodies.
• Chadsmead Primary and St Chad’s both held a non-uniform day that raised £310.16 – thanks kids!
• Staff gave up our weekends off to fundraise at the Lichfield Food Festival with our famous tombola Tracy.
• The inspiring ladies at Flexercise – Lichfield have donated gifts to Pathway for the past 20 years and have outdone themselves this year.
• Earlier in the year, we took part in the Tesco Book Bank raising an impressive £473.
• Co-op pharmacy – Boley Park decided to donate gifts to us this year instead of their usual Secret Santa.
• HD Hair and Beauty – Cannock did a collection among staff and clients for children’s gifts.
• The Lichfield Ladies Darts Team scored 180 with a donation of fab gifts!
• 1^st business group and the Young ones burton donated carloads of gifts – wow!
• Tina Clement’s and her clients donated some sweet treats to our staff and refuges to indulge in over the festive period.
• St. Stephen’s church Gt.Haywood held their annual festive service, and some of the staff snook along for a bit of singing and hot chocolate.
• Cheslyn Hay High School Sixth formers donated presents for the women again – thanks!
• Lichfield Social Club and their customers collected gifts on behalf of Santa.
• Brakes also swapped secret Santa and decided to give back instead.

Christmas can be a time of fear for women in abusive relationships, but for the women in our refuges, we always try to offer a place of warmth and safety, especially over the festive period.
With your help, we provide the women and children with memories they can hopefully look back on positively.

Merry Christmas!

Over the past year or so we have been exploring all sorts of new ways to raise the money we haven’t explored before. Back last year April & Wendy had the great idea of hosting our very own charity pop-up shop, and the rest was history!

Between January and February, we spent long days and nights sorting, labelling and pricing over 600 items ready to sell at our pop-up shop.

All items were kindly donated by the lovely people in the Staffordshire community and also our very own Pathway Project staff – thank you to all of the kind people that donated some fantastic items.

February saw all hands on deck and the launch of our very first pop-up shop at The Field Community space in Lichfield centre, after a few slight hiccups the morning of (including the keys being missing from the night before) we were open and ready for business!

We had all sorts on offer from Lulu Guinness handbags, a gorgeous gold Vivienne Westwood party dress to clothing from high street favourites from Topshop and River Island – we had something for everyone!

We’re proud to say our first-ever popup was a tremendous success raising £964 over the course of two days.

Thank you to everyone that attended, we had such a great time, and hope to host another pop-up in the not-too-distant future.