About

One of Grippers’ Annual Walks

Grippers is a charity founded in 2006 to support young Gloucestershire adults who are recovering from mental illness.

Grippers exists to give financial help to help those who are recovering from psychosis to return to normal life. As we have virtually no overheads, almost every penny goes to fund a wide variety of activities, sports and other equipment and educational courses.

The Work of the Charity

From 2006-2019, we paid for a four-day residential outward-bound style residential course in west Wales, attended by up to twelve young people who are recovering from psychosis. They take part in challenging physical activities, as well as planning and cooking meals, building trust and confidence and, judging by the smiles, having fun and chilling out.

Since 2020 we have concentrated on paying for monthly group activities such as Go Ape, Canoeing down the Wye, Wildwoods exploration, Aquadventure and Dry-slope skiing.

All this needs a steady stream of income. In December 2022, Richard contributed £600 by having a sponsored head-shave. In September 2023, Harry completed the Cheltenham half-marathon and raised valuable funds for Grippers. On October 15th 2023, we had the traditional Annual Walk and sponsorship and funds are flowing in from this.


News

On November 19th, James Hamell stepped into the boxing ring to raise money for Grippers. James is a past service-user who has not only fully recovered but has become an influential supporter of Grippers. The benefits of boxing are very well known and he decided to sharpen up, get fit and learn to box. This led to a competition/demonstration in which he participated. James raised over £600 from this one bout. He is in red in the action photo below ( I expect that you are glad you aren’t the guy in blue!).


Donations

We used to invite donations via a link to “Just Giving” until they withdrew their free service. Alas, all charitable donation organisations such as Just Giving charge a fee which is difficult or  impossible to avoid. We believe that money from donors should all go to the chosen charity. For this reason we prefer donations to be paid directly into the Grippers bank account by BACS. Even better would be a regular donation which some donors already do. For reasons of security we do not wish to publish the account details on this webpage, but we are very happy to provide these details in response to an email enquiry to us at info@grippers.org.uk

Registered charity no. 1117290