We are attracting
more and more young people who want to take part in sponsored events. We had
our best ever London Marathon this year and are currently recruiting runners
for the Bristol Half Marathon. There are many other sponsored events that our
supporters sign up to and some of them even go it alone.
We are engaging
more with secondary schools, and feedback suggests that many of their pupils
identify with what we are doing because of a grandparent or elderly aunt or
uncle who has dementia. Last year, we had great support from Bradley Stoke CommunitySchool, who sent a small group to meet BRACE-funded scientists and then raised
£520 over two days. Last week, I went to Orchard School in Bristol, accompanied
by Laura Palmer (Manager of the SW Dementia Brain Bank) to give a presentation.
They, too, are determined to support BRACE this year and I know that the cause
has personal significance for some of their students.
It is great to
see younger people, including teenagers, taking up this crucial struggle. It is
they, rather than today’s elderly people, who stand to gain most from current
research. However, old age seems a long way away when you are in your teens or
twenties, and it is clearly compassion and sometimes the pain of loss that
drives them, not anxiety about the risks they may face in later life.