"Oh my days.... Dig deep folks. These guys wear capes!"
Samantha Copeland – Facebook, September 9th, 2023
About Us
Our charity mission is to relieve the needs of people with life limiting or life changing health conditions or who are disabled living in south Derbyshire, North-West Leicestershire or East Staffordshire by providing grants, memorable experiences through days out or mini breaks to individuals in need to enhance their quality of life.
Charities and other voluntary community organisations who support those in need and who’s charitable purposes are in line with those of Miles for Smiles will also be supported.
Where It All Began
Miles For Smiles (MFS) is a charity fundraising group founded in 2015. We formed our organization a year after my first daughter was born – Ivy.
Two days after she was born, we were told Ivy had several holes in her heart – her liver and kidney were failing. This can’t be happening, I thought. I remember it to this day: my whole world stopped and crashed. We went outside to our car to take in what we had just been told. I thought, I need to be strong for Gina – Ivy’s mother. But I just remember sitting there and the rain was bouncing off the window screen of the car. 48 hours ago, it was the best day of my life now it’s the worst. How can something change in such little time?
To be strong for Gina and Ivy, I just kept telling myself everything would be ok.
We spent 10 days at Birmingham Hospital to treat her liver and kidney. As her status started to improve, they monitored the heart very closely. After 10 days care they sent us back to Burton to finish the course of treatment.
They saved my daughter’s life. That’s why the year after, I reached out to two of my close friends, Joe and Jordan, to do something to raise money for this great hospital as our way of saying thank you for Ivy.
In 2015, we carried out the 1st Challenge of Climbing Ben Nevis. Our target was £1000 – not really knowing what to expect. We went on to raise over £3400, which was just unbelievable.
A year later, we set out to do the 3 Peaks Challenge, setting the target as the same: £3400. We then raised double.
We thought to ourselves: This is an insane amount of support we are receiving. We’ve gone from wanting to raise £1000 in one year, to raising over £10,000 in 2 years.
The Start Of Something Special
The local community was really getting behind us, so we vowed to the community that each year we would make the challenges harder than the year before. If people were donating their hard earned money to our cause, we wanted to make sure we was earning it. Eight years later, we may be starting to regret that!
After year 4, we realised we needed to start a Social Page up where people could follow all our fundraising, rather than on personal profiles.
We asked the local community what they think we should call ourselves, and that’s where we got the name “Miles For Smiles.”
This was when it really took off, because all our information pictures videos were all in one place. We went from raising £8,000 in year 4 to over £24,000 in year 5. We were all totally blown away – TWENTY FOUR THOUSAND POUNDS, we kept saying in disbelief.
Once again, we asked the local community who we could fundraise for. Our followers chose the “Me & Dee” Charity.
We all said. “Listen guys, if last year’s total isn’t beaten, don’t be disheartened.” It was such an unbelievable year, the support got even bigger; the page climbed to over 7,000 followers in just 12 months and we went on to raising over £51,000!
We will always remember that challenge. It was probably the most difficult to date. We said, after this year, shall we call it a day? How can a group of friends from a small town in south Derbyshire called Swadlincote be raising this sort of money?
We got back to the Greyhound in Woodville to a road closure of hundreds and hundreds of people clapping us in cheering and shouting. As we walked in to that welcome, we checked the Just Giving page. It was around £45,000. At that moment, and we all just looked at each other and said, “How can we call it a day now?”
We must carry on – this is the start of something very special!
We are so thankful to Miles for smiles for giving us such a special family day out with Teddy and his brothers yesterday. Making memories and seeing the smile on Teds face is the greatest gift of all.
