Using Words to raise money for Great Ormond Street Hospital

volunteerworker

Good Morning,
I have spent over 4 years working on a childrens novel to try to raise money for GOSH (justgiving.co.uk/theprimatepuzzle), encourage children to read and highlight environmental issues in Borneo to the younger generation.

I've self-published a childrens novel (after receiving over 20 publisher rejections) and raised £3430+ already for GreatOrmondStreetHospital. They saved me life in 1984 as I had a Wilms tumour (very rare type of kidney cancer), and have been amazing ever since. I still see the same doctor as a long term out-patient but at The Heart Hospital and UCL, as there are still ongoing health concerns. All royalties from the book are going to GOSH.

So far I've had the amazing illustrator, web designers, sounds engineers, an actor friend etc all give up their time for free so we could raise as much money for GOSH as possible.

There was an article in a recent basildon echo explaining what we are doing. .echo-news.co.uk/news/4763117.Kids____book_is_my_way_of_repaying_hospital/ (although they got the website wrong at the bottom of the article, which was a bit of bummer).

I am still involved with GOSH (on a steering committee & as a long term out-patient). I went up recently to deliver 50 books to the charity arm so they could be wrapped up as Christmas and given to children (as being in hospital for long stints is pretty boring). I had a slot on BBC essex radio recently but I have had very little response as yet.

Currently two school friends have been helping me every weekend for months working on the audio book version. We want to distribute the audio book to every childrens hospital in the country so that it can be played on hospital radio (serialised each week maybe or donwloaded by the children onto ipods etc). We are close to finishing it and should be ready to distribute it early 2010.

I work as a volunteer support worker (for the KeyRIng charity) and a PA to a young adult with learning disabilities in Chadwell Heath and thought that it would be cool for us to distribute the audio book to all charities dealing with adults with learning disabilites. People don't realise so many adults in England either cannot read or have a very young reading age. It would be nice if they could listen to a story and enjoy it aswell.

If there was anything you could do to help to raise awareness for our projects we would all really appreciate it. No worries if you can't but I thought it was worth a go, even if it is a big step up from the Basildon Echo.

kind regards,

Oliver Nash
Author and volunteer support worker
theprimatepuzzle.com
twitter - primatepuzzle