Birmingham students brave poor diet and worse hygiene to camp out in university library for charity for a week and counting
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Your support makes all the difference.Three students from Birmingham have set up permanent camp in the university's library to raise money and awareness for Nightline.
David Franklin, Sam Jones and James Phillips have chosen to lock themselves in the library during deadline week. The students stress that university can be challenging for lots of different reasons and everyone needs support at times. They’re raising money for Birmingham Nightline, a telephone support service run by students, for students. Nightline offers confidential, non-judgmental listening from 6pm – 8am every night of term.
The students have set themselves some ground rules; they’re not allowed to leave the library at any time, they must spend the majority of their time working and they must be respectful of others studying around them. They said that the lock in will be “a battle of physical endurance, of mental strength and of supreme procrastination, but above all, it will be a battle to maintain personal hygiene.”
They’ve now raised over £1,000, which was their original target, after being in the library for seven days. Since starting their campaign, the students have been contacted by people who have experienced mental health difficulties. They said “we came into this wanting to raise money and awareness, we didn’t think we’d actually be directly helping people. People have come up to us saying they’ve had mental health difficulty and never spoken to anyone and our campaign has made them speak to someone for the first time.”
If you would like to sponsor Franklin, Jones and Phillips by donating to Nightline, please visit this website
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