After benefitting from the GoFundMe Campaign to the tune of £6,130 and the kindness of strangers, friends and family, I have received a total of £5,820.26. The rest of the money has been taken by GoFundMe.

This is not a criticism of the for-profit business, but just serves to explain my calculations below, in a transparent manner.

A quick Google-search brought up the following information:

GoFundMe is a for-profit company. It charges a 2.9% payment-processing fee on each donation, along with 30 cents for every donation. That means if a campaign raised $1,000 through 10 donations of $100 each, GoFundMe would collect about $32 [Google].

From this money I have already paid £17.08 for a Visa for one of my PAs, and on Monday I will be paying the outstanding balance of £4,278, for the flights and accommodation. I will pay for my own flight and accommodation and I will work out how much this will cost before finalising the payment.

If anyone has any questions, then please feel free to ask. I always work extra hard to  be transparent with public money that I respect wholeheartedly. After buying a ETSA Visa and paying the outstanding balance, I will still be left with £1,525.18.

Should the trip go well, this can go towards a future short-break which will be considerably less money if I can book it in July 2024. I did plan on booking this trip much earlier and if I had the approval that I needed from the LA, I would have been able to book the whole trip for just £3,000. This is just another example of the ineptitude that disabled people have to put up with in the face of heartless LAs.

Thankfully, I am lucky enough to recognise that we live in a society  and there are some very generous and kind-hearted people out there, who can recognise injustice when they see it.

I will always be grateful to everyone who has dug deep to help me fund this much needed short-break. If you would still like to donate to this cause you can do so via the GoFundMe page that can be accessed by clicking on the text of this page. My sincere thanks in advance to any further donations. 

***

As part of my crowdfunding campaign, I said that I plan on cycling to Florida using the hand pedals on my Thera Trainer exercise bike. The total distance from my house to my desired destination is 6,766km so I had better get a move on. I think we had estimated that this challenge would take me over 2.5years. I started yesterday and recorded 6.4km in a single 50 minute session. Only 6,759.6km to go – for those of you who think that I haven’t got a prayer then you won’t realise that I always achieve my goals if I set my mind to something.