Our fundraising heroes: Amanda and Rebecca's Race2Dublin

Our names are Amanda and Rebecca and we’re both second year students at the University of Edinburgh, studying International Relations and Law. On February 12 2016, both of us hitch-hiked from Edinburgh all the way to Dublin as part of the ESCA organised Race2Dublin in which 40 teams took part to hitch-hiked to Dublin in the quickest time to raise donations for charities. We said it – ‘hitch-hiked’, meaning we travelled across the country… with no money! We did this to raise awareness and raise proceeds for our chosen charity, the Edinburgh Rape Crisis Centre (ERCC).

For us, we started our fundraising efforts in late January, with a target set of £500. We began by setting up our own Virgin Money Fundraising website and shared the link across both of our Facebook accounts and we continually reached out to our friends and family members. By the second week of fundraising, we had reached about £300 and we were so overwhelmingly overjoyed by the support we were receiving. This figure only continued to grow. By mid-February, right before we commenced our journey, we had surpassed our target and had reached over £600.

The night before the race began on the 11th, both of us were up late adding the finishing touches to our banner because we thought what better way to stop and catch people’s attention than with a sign stating ‘Charity Hitch-hike’ and ‘Dublin’ – it definitely wasn’t something people expected to see often. We were definitely too psyched to sleep well or much at all but had made sure our backpacks were stuffed full not with clothes or toiletries (because they weren’t the priority of course…) but of snacks and food – fuel to last us the unknown duration of the journey ahead.

On the day, we didn’t necessarily have a plan, but had options for possible routes we could travel by. Once the race officially started, our first move was to travel to Princes Street to raise as many funds to sponsor our travel as possible. No doubt two girls dressed in rainbow-patterned sports leggings, bright green t-shirts, one wearing oversized clover-shaped glasses, both holding a long banner would attract attention somehow. Despite this, we were definitely surprised by the amount of people who stopped and were genuinely interested in the charity and in our venture. At the same time, we were touched by brief encounters with several individuals who shared their belief that supporting people affected by sexual violence was extremely important, and one individual who shared that she had experienced sexual violence herself.

Our guess is that we managed to talk to over 60 people, with each person donating between £1 to £5 and in no time our funds accumulated that we were both able to purchase a ticket for a 10-hour bus journey from Edinburgh to Cairnryan, inclusive of a ferry from there to Belfast then bus straight to Dublin. Along the way we managed to bump into 5 other racing pairs and got to know each other on the ferry ride over.

In the end, all of us 6 groups managed to arrive at our designated hostel at about 2am, all finishing joint 6th place with the time of 16 hours and 26 minutes. We were all beyond exhausted from the journey but it felt so surreal that we had managed to successfully arrive in a completely different country. We were very proud with our journey and along the way we managed to meet many amazing people.

We would like to thank all of our friends and family back home and the ERCC for tracking our journey progress and continually supporting us. It was an unforgettable experience and we hope that our fundraising efforts will not only directly benefit the ERCC but have made people more aware of the vital services it provides.

With love,

Amanda and Rebecca xx

#fundraising