14-year-old Phoebe was diagnosed with osteosarcoma, an extremely rare cancer in children, in January 2020 and has been receiving gruelling rounds of treatment and surgery ever since; tackling it all in the midst of coronavirus and just four years since her mum, Hannah, had gone through her own battle with breast cancer.
This was hard news for the wider family to take, but with the pandemic stopping all essential travel too, Phoebe’s cousins, Zara and Freddie, and her aunt and uncle, found they were now unable to travel the distance from Edinburgh to London to be there in person; to support the family at a time when they needed it most “It broke our hearts that we couldn’t travel to London to be with Phoebe and support them all, so we decided that we would be there virtually instead….a Campbell family relay, from Edinburgh to London, on our spin bike and covering 400 miles over 3 days. A virtual ride to give them all a virtual hug – goodness knows they needed it!”
Their efforts weren’t just about showing support for their family though, they also wanted to give something back to the charity who had been there at a time when family and friends weren’t able to be “Momentum Children’s Charity has been an invaluable lifeline; providing Phoebe and her family with fantastic support – arranging socially distanced doorstep owl visits, a personal message from the author Dame Jacqueline Wilson, and touching base regularly just to see how they are doing and asking the much needed question how can we help?”
When the Campbell family found out that Momentum Children’s Charity was facing devastating losses of income off the back of multiple fundraising events being cancelled, and facing a future where they might not be able to support families like Phoebe’s, they took action
“One of the silver linings of coronavirus, is that Zara and Freddie have become increasingly aware of the power of random acts of kindness and so we decided as a family that we needed, in our own way, to try and do something to help”
Bianca Effemey, Founder and CEO was also incredibly moved and spoke on behalf of the charity “We want to thank the family so much for their amazing fundraising cycle. I started the charity 16 years ago; in that time, I have come across some amazing inspirational people and have been humbled by so many. Supporting Phoebe has been an absolute pleasure and we will continue to do so. Going through treatment is hard enough but to have to bear this through these times adds extra mental turbulence: what I do know is that with the lows there will be highs and my ethos is that we build on the highs to carry through the lows. This amazing challenge will help us continue our much-loved charity.”
