Written by : Richard Southwood

Last month my 5 year old son Liam Southwood, a West Ham superfan, raised over £2000 for NHS Charities Together by completing 101 dribbles, goals and celebrations.

On 6th June Liam will be taking on another 101 challenge but this time wants football loving children from around the world to join him to raise money for Isla Caton, a 5 year old fellow West Ham supporter currently undergoing treatment for neuroblastoma in Barcelona.

Due to the COVID-19 lockdown, fundraising for Isla has been challenging and she is around £80k short of her target to help with ongoing treatment. We feel that this challenge will be great to get children active during the lockdown restrictions and at the same time help raise money for an important cause.

The previous challenge was inspired by the West Ham United #HammersAtHome challenges that Liam has been doing during the lockdown. Liam came up with the idea of his own mega challenge and we thought it would be great to tie this in to fundraise for a fantastic cause.

Following the previous challenge, we were blown away by the good luck messages from people all over the world, including West Ham’s Michail Antonio and Jack Wilshere, along with other personalities from the football world. He has had over 350,000 interactions on social media with his videos entertaining people during the lockdown. People from all over the world messaged us to say what a great idea it was so, after the challenge was over, we felt that it would be great to get more people involved and raise money for another great cause for Isla.

You can see our social media videos from Liam’s last challenge on Twitter (@richsouthwood) and Instagram (@liams101challenge) along with updates for the 101challengeforisla.

So far we have around 30 children who have said they will be taking part on 6th June and are hoping that more will join Liam in having great fun and improving their football skills at the same time.

 

To find out more, please message Richard Southwood through Twitter (@richsouthwood) and Instagram (@liams101challenge). To donate, please visit https://www.justgiving.com/fundraising/101challengeforisla.