Portage Wins Charity Bands

Portage is one of StairSteady’s favourite charities and we particularly support the locally based Rotherham service. Portage is a home-visiting educational service for pre-school children with additional support needs and their families. The National Portage Association was established in 1983 to offer support and information to parents and professionals involved in Portage, and have been at the forefront of developments in support to very young children and their families since then. The Association became a charitable company in 2001.

Portage aims to:

work with families to help them develop a quality of life and experience for themselves and their young children in which they can learn together, play together, participate and be included in their community in their own right

play a part in minimising the disabling barriers that confront young children and their families receiving Portage services

support the national and local development of inclusive services for children

Through our involvement with this charity, StairSteady has become aware of the invaluable help and support that Portage provides to families within the community. Most services are reliant upon donations and funds raised through events and initiatives to maintain their work. Rotherham Portage Service recently entered a competition run by Steel City Marketing, who are based in Sheffield, and were the proud winners of 100 charity bands.

The charity bands are white with blue writing and have the words Rotherham Portage Service on them. Portage is offering a band for a minimum donation of £1 each to raise much needed funds for them to carry on their valuable work within the local community. StairSteady employees were amongst the first people to buy these unique bands! If you too would like to buy one of these bands or make a donation please contact Ruth on 0845 652 88 04. All donations will provide resources for the Rotherham Portage Service to help home visitors working with local families with children with additional needs. Please do what you can to keep this important service going.

12 Hour Cardio Marathon

On Saturday the 24th October, me and my brother, my boyfriend and my dad took place in a team 12 hour cardio marathon (a charity event for the South Yorkshire Community Fund), the aim was that in teams of four or more, you completed 12hours on either a spin bike or treadmill, for 12hours there must always be one of your team members on your piece of equipment!

The challenge started at 7am and we would finish at 7pm, it had been organised by a friend of mine called Becky and she did a wonderful job! There were four teams on sin bikes and one treadmill team, each group slit the time differently, 1 hour slits, half an hour splits, my team opted for 20min splits. This meant we had 20min on the bike and an hour to recover, the 20min on the bike was 20min sprinting as the other aim was to do as many KM as possible in the 12 hours! As a team we managed 405KM in 12 hours and all the teams on the bikes managed 1624KM- that’s from junction 30 on the m1 all the way to Villanova Marconi in Italy!

When we weren’t on the bikes we had snacks provided and we watched films (some were very appropriate such as ‘Run Fat Boy Run’). It was a tiring day and at times quite painful as anyone who regularly rides a bike will know, getting back on the saddle is the hardest bit! But it was a good laugh and Becky organised it really well!

Let’s hope we raised a lot of money for the South Yorkshire Community Fund!