For our Big Give Christmas Challenge this year, the ME Association will be trying to raise £100,000 to help develop the UK’s only ME/CFS Biobank – held at the University College London/Royal Free Hospital and run by staff at the world-famous London School for Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

In order to achieve this ambitious target for this year’s online appeal, we shall first need to have pledges in place from people of goodwill that come to a total of £25,000.

Could you offer us such a pledge, as a Vegepa Club! Member?

We shan’t actually be asking for your money until the New Year, after the Christmas Challenge has closed.

But £25,000-worth of pledges in place will mean that, if the appeal is successful, every donation will be matched pound-for-pound during the public-giving part of the campaign. This will run for a fortnight from 10am on Thursday, December 4.

And, if enough people donate bang on the button at 10am on the first three days, money from a ‘Charity Champions’ fund will be released which could mean that we end up by close of play on December 17 with the full £100,000 – money that’s vital to secure the future of the UK ME/CFS Biobank.

So here’s the real challenge: with hundreds of charities competing for funds, there will never be enough in the Charity Champions’ pot to satisfy every charity’s call for funds. It would be great if this year we could show that the ME Community is really up to the competition.

For more details about why we’ve chosen to raise money for the UK ME/CFS Biobank this year, please click HERE.

And if you’d like to make your pledge now, the link to the pledging form is HERE.

The UK ME/CFS Biobank website is HERE.

Thank you… from the bottom of our hearts. We shall be providing regular updates and fresh information about this important challenge.