Larsen's Pride is a small charitable organisation which aims to support children with brain tumours. First, we provide 'big cat' soft toys to children with a new brain tumour diagnosis. This brings comfort to the children who have often found themselves unexpectedly in hospital. We are also growing the charity to fund research into paediatric brain tumours which are the biggest cancer killer of children in this country but receive the less than 1% of the national spend on cancer research. Paediatric brain tumour research relies on charity fundraising to make up much of this gap.
Larsen's Pride is named after our son who died as a result of a brain tumour. He loved big cats and he wanted to be a zookeeper/conservationist. The name also reflects his love of big cats, our pride in him and the connotations of a pride of lions, a group or family sticking together. Furthermore, we associate lions with courage, strength and bravery which is exactly how we would describe all of the children we have met facing brain tumours and treatment.
We are a small charity but we are creative and innovative! Before Larsen died, he initiated the 'Slideathon' challenge to raise money for the local children's hospital. The slideathon requires you to take on a 26 slide marathon challenge for charity. Since Larsen did this, we have grown the challenge each Easter and more and more children have got involved and been sponsored to complete this. It is child friendly and lots of fun and allows children to get involved in supporting other children their age with brain tumours.
We also do smaller fundraising ventures such as charity Christmas cards, raffles and so on.
