Most people would make a beeline for their beds after a 40-mile walk, but not Tom, Joe, and Kate.
Churchdown Academy School’s pastoral team, Tom Willetts, 30, Joe Lawrence, 32, and Kate Stevens, 33, won’t just be walking 40-miles for Young Minds, they’re walking through the night and when they reach their destination, they’ll be arriving to a full day’s work.
The idea for the walk came about when Tom was thinking about what to do for Children’s Mental Health week (week of 5th February) which they always promote at Churchdown Academy School – where he’s worked since 2019. He is constantly thinking, “what more can we do?” Hoping he can start important conversations around Children’s mental health. When he was searching for inspiration, the idea of a walk came up. Once he’d got Joe and Kate on board, they’d developed the plan into a walk from Bristol, setting off early Sunday 4th and ending up at the school later in the day. But, always going above and beyond, when they were sat together at work, Tom suggested, “why don’t we do it overnight?”
Tom hopes that the challenge he’s set himself will not only raise money for children’s mental health, but the physical and mental trial he and the team are committing to will show the children, “how much we do care,” and that it’s alright to feel how you feel.
Part of the walk will be the mental challenge; Tom is expecting there to be some difficult times where they will need to communicate with each other and keep each other’s spirits up. Tom said, “the reason why we wanted, I say want to work the next day… is a lot of young people everywhere will experience a really difficult night or a difficult couple of days and they have to keep going.” He wants to make children feel seen, heard, and appreciated.
This desire to help people comes from when Tom started at university where he really struggled to start with. “I sort of pinpoint that time as where my passion for this has come from because I didn’t really have anyone to talk to.” He also just loves how rewarding working with young people is.
There’s been an overwhelming amount of support from their colleagues, students and parents. He said, “most of them think we’re absolutely bonkers.” Bonkers or not, they’re currently only £71 away from their £2,000 goal. The team chose to raise the money for Young Minds – “they do great work and something personally I always say to my students about their resources.”
In 2019, he ran the London Marathon, so the physical challenge isn’t new to Tom and he’s not thinking about stopping anytime soon. He said, “we’ve got a lot of time on the walk to think about what we want to do next.” They’ve started to consider the possibility to face Tom’s fear of heights; “maybe I could skydive onto the school field on a Monday morning.”
Thinking about the challenge ahead of him this year though, Tom says reassuring himself somewhat; “It’s just a really, really long walk.”
You can donate to the team’s Just Giving page here and follow along on their journey here
