SAMH – Our Charity of the Year
Keppie Design are delighted to announce our chosen charity for 2023 and 2024 is ‘Scottish Action for Mental Health (SAMH)’.
SAMH have been around since 1923 and they work with various communities throughout Scotland to tackle the increasing need for mental health support and wellbeing. 1 in 4 people will experience a mental health related issue, such as anxiety or depression in their lifetime, and since the pandemic, SAMH’s information service saw a 50% increase in demand. The Keppie Team recognise how vital mental health services are and we are pleased to announce SAMH as our new charity partner.
SAMH focus on helping those with mental health problems to better understand them. They promote self-help and wellbeing and provide useful information on how you can help someone you care about with a mental health problem, with a focus on suicide prevention. They aim to end the stigma and discrimination surrounding mental health difficulties. SAMH support a range of communities from homelessness, addictions, housing support, care homes, supported accommodation, employment and many more people throughout Scotland.
For more information on the work that they do, or if they can help you or someone you care about with a mental health problem, please visit their website: www.samh.org.uk.
WHAT WE ARE DOING
Our goal across 2023 and 2024 is to support the valuable work that SAMH do to improve lives and mental health support across the whole of Scotland. £20 gives SAMH time to listen and talk to someone who is struggling to cope. We want to be able to help aid SAMH to reach further people who will be able to access this help, which is so vitally needed!
We all have mental health, in the same way as we all have physical health. As SAMH focuses on active living, we at Keppie felt it was important to do this ourselves and have chosen fundraising challenges that promote and encourage everyone to engage in physical activity. As for our mental health, we recently ran a “Time to Talk Day” on 2nd February, which saw us make space in our day to talk and listen to each other and break down myths and barriers surrounding mental health.
We started off the year with Keppie’s Step Challenge in January, getting us out fit and active after the winter break. We managed a massive 70,000 steps overall, whilst starting our fundraising. It was then onto February for the Valentine’s Day bake sale, which certainly brought out our inner Mary Berry’s! Our select panel of judges were definitely treated to a vast and diverse number of treats!
As SAMH recognises the importance of linking physical health to mental health, our next sporting challenge was a 5k (walk or run) around Falkirk’s Kelpies. We had a massive amount of people sign up to this challenge, and it was a fantastic evening, with the illuminated glow of the 100ft equine figures lighting up the skies!
April saw us get both creative and competitive with a double Easter Egg Hunt in the office (10 minutes of chaos and exhaustion, with some people getting more competitive than others!), and then at the end of the month, saw the staff display their artistic talents, with a Keppie Art Sale and ‘Guess the Artist’ competition. A special shout out to Grant Russell-Jackson, who incorporated a special optical illusion into his spectacular art piece.
We had been in training for our next physical challenge, and one that would get us muddier than the others; the summer MacTuff challenge! A group of strong volunteers dared to race around the Knockhill Racing Circuit, in what ended up being a 10k challenge due to a last-minute course change (not the 7k initially promised!). Overall, it was a fantastically run event, physically demanding but ultimately rewarding, and a great team bonding day– we all carried each other throughout it, whether it was getting out a mud pit or being lifted across high barriers!
Next up was our internal events such as Keppie Krufts and Games Night in May and June. Both, nearly as competitive as each other, as we showed off our pets, from dogs to cats, to tortoise! Games Night brought out some unknown ambitions, with the egg and spoon race getting quite heated!
July prompted a good warm up for those competing in August’s Aberfeldy Triathlon, with a cycle challenge; 100 miles for SAMH! Some of the competitors even doubled this amount, which is an amazing achievement. The Aberfeldy Triathlon was our most physically demanding challenge with a 1900m swim, 90k cycle and 21k run! We entered 4 teams into this challenge, with the fastest team completing it in an amazing 4 hours 55 minutes! The team had aimed to raise £1,500, and doubled this, raising over £3,000!
You can help us to support SAMH us by visiting our dedicated JustGiving charity page.
At the end of September 2023 we passed our interim target of £10,000 for 2023!
We have ample ideas and fundraising activities planned and being pencilled into our diary, so watch this space! We will be regularly updating our socials with this, so make sure to follow us on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook for regular updates.
