This is my first Blog for The Forget me Not Children’s Hospice (hopefully of many), I am 20 years old from Huddersfield and I am a professional racing driver currently racing in the Porsche Carerra Cup GB.

Dan in his #PurplePosse training

I have been racing since I was just 11 years old starting in go karts, I soon found out that I was pretty good at it so it started to get a bit more serious taking part in British championships. When I was 15 years old I won a scholarship to race in the Junior Ginetta car series.  This was a great help to give me a push into cars. Since then I have raced in many different classes which has helped me to get where I am now. Last year I raced in the Scirocco R Cup over in Germany and came 3^rd in the championship. I then applied for the Porsche Scholarship where they had to select a final 4 to go along to Silverstone for a shootout. The shootout consisted of Media tests, Fitness tests, Driving tests and many more on top of that. So the day was mega hard but it all paid off because I won the Scholarship, this was definitely the best thing to happen to me in my career!

So here I am in 2012 racing a Porsche and its going great, I am currently 3^rd in the championship and I had my first win on Sunday which no other Scholar has ever done on their first year! So that’s a very brief story about my racing career. Every year I support a chosen charity and this year we are supporting the Forget me Not Children’s Hospice, we chose to support the charity because they are local to us and we know what amazing things they do to help and support children with a life limiting or life threatening condition, and their families. So we are donating 10% of our prize money from this year plus lots of track tickets so people can come along to watch me race.  This includes some of the families who look to the hospice for support, we hope to be able to create some really special memories for them throughout the season.

The main thing I am doing at the moment is running the Leeds Half Marathon on the 13^th of May to raise money. I have been training my backside off to try and get ready for the 23km / 13mile run. If you would like to sponsor me please go to http://www.justgiving.com/daniellloydracing-halfmarathon to make a donation or text the code DLRM99 followed by how much you would like to give to the number 70070. E.g DLRM99 £5

All the training I have been doing alongside my day job of being a racing driver has been tough, but I know it is nothing compared to how tough the children and families supported by Forget Me Not have it.  I want to do my bit to support them and hopefully throughout this exciting year I will be able to tell you more about some of the work we are doing together.  If you are in Leeds on the 13^th May – look out for me in my Purple T-shirt and cheer me on, I may need a bit of gentle encouragement in the last couple of miles!

To sponsor me and raise funds for this important cause visit http://www.justgiving.com/daniellloydracing-halfmarathon

Thank you!

Daniel Lloyd – Porsche Carrera Cup GB Driver

Being stood outside filming in the wind and the freezing cold for four hours, hands numb and nose running, to say I was cold was an understatement. In fact I was freezing and under normal circumstances you could say I was having a really bad day but, surprisingly, I wasn’t. In fact it was the exact opposite. I was doing what I love doing, filming, for a fantastic charity, The Forget Me Not Children’s Hospice.

A lecturer at The University of Huddersfield first introduced me to The Forget Me Not Children’s Hospice. We were going to raise money for the charity through the proceeds of a festival we would be organising as part of a university project. The festival never happened, but me, along with two other friends decided that we liked what the charity does and wanted to contribute.

Being Journalism and Media students we decided the best way that we could help the charity would be by using our passion for writing. We covered the 10th Forget Me Not Children’s Hospice charity shop opening for the Hebden Bridge Times and this is where we were first introduced to the warmth of people at the charity.

We thought that writing this story would take us no more than an hour, how wrong we were. What should have been a ten-minute job to get two quotes for our story turned in to two hours of conversations, laughter and bucks fizz. We were taken in by the friendliness, dedication and hard work that goes into everything the charity does. We walked away from writing the story feeling good, not only had we done what we love doing but we had also made a lot of people at the charity really happy.

After meeting the people at the shop and seeing the hard work dedication that is put in to the charity we wanted to do more. We agreed with the charity to film the charity abseil at The University of Huddersfield.

On the day we went along zipped up in our winter best, camera and tripod in hand. It was a really cold and windy day but the atmosphere was just fantastic, everyone was smiling. No matter how cold we got we didn’t stop filming because with each shot we captured another smile, another laugh, another person who had gone out of their way to raise money for the charity.

That day no one stopped working hard and smiling despite the weather. No one complained they were cold and everyone made the effort. It would have been easy to walk past and think that these people have easy jobs, but the reality is they don’t. They have to raise over £2.5 million a year to keep the children’s hospice open, they have to keep smiling, through the wind, through the rain, through the good times and the bad times so that people continue to contribute towards to hospice. They know that if they smile through and work hard that that smile will benefit a child who needs, and uses the hospice.

The abseil video

Robbie goes over the edge

Working with The Forget Me Not Children’s Hospice has opened my eyes to the wonderful work that they do for children at a time when they need it most. I used to push charity’s to the side dropping only a few pence into a pot every now and then but Forget Me Not Children’s Hospice has introduced me to a world where it can happen to you and has enlightened me to do more for charity’s in the future. Everyone I have met in my short time with the charity does a simply amazing job and I applaud them all. I cannot thank the charity enough for letting us contribute towards the wonderful work they do enough.

By Jennifer Whatmough, Nicola Cope and Zak Lewis.