Thumbs up for student fundraising effort

Students at the University of St Andrews are hitchhiking their way across Europe for charity.

The annual event, organised by the student-led Charities Campaign, aims to raise over £17,000 for charities including Cancer Research UK, Children’s Hospice Association Scotland (CHAS) and the RNLI (Royal National Lifeboat Institution).

The race event – named Race2 Barcelona – was launched this morning (Monday 23 January 2012) with 205 students setting off from mystery locations around Scotland… all headed for the same finishing line in Spain.

In teams of twos and threes, students race against eachother, and their progress and safety is monitored by new software RACEbook, which hitchhikers send text messages to every four hours.

Marked out by bright yellow t-shirts, all students carry official Charities Campaign certificates and set out to raise £100 or more each in sponsorship.

All money raised will go to the Campaign’s six nominated charities this year: Cancer Research UK, Children’s Hospice Association Scotland, the Royal National Lifeboat Institution, Medecins Sans Frontiere, Maggie’s Cancer Caring Centres and Macmillan’s Cancer Support.

The Charities Campaign, an all-student subcommittee of the St Andrews Students’ Association, has been running Race2 events for seven years.

The event is supported by Vodafone’s JustTextGiving and Ernst and Young.  Donations can be sent to students taking part in Race2Barcelona via Vodafone’s JustTextGiving free donation service – text RACE23 £amount to 70070.

ENDS

Issued by the Press Office
Contact Gayle Cook, Senior Communications Manager on 01334 467227, [email protected]
Ref: Thumbsup 230112

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