Charity Cycle Ride Smashes Fundraising Target

31st October 2014

Funds raised from a gruelling Sheffield Hallam University charity cycle ride have today been presented to a local cancer charity and a new fund to help more care leavers into University.

Professor Philip Jones, Vice-Chancellor of the University, has raised £13,000 for cycling stage two of the Tour de France Grand Depart on 29 June with the University's cycling club, Hallam Cycling. The amount raised is £3,000 more than the initial £10,000 target. And the cash has now been split equally between the official Grand Depart charity, Marie Curie Cancer Care - whose nurses in the region provide more than 30,000 hours of care for more than 1,300 patients per year - and a brand new scheme to help more young people from the care system into University. The new scheme will use its share of the cash to extend the existing Unite Foundation Scholarship Scheme, which already funds five young people who have been in care to go to Sheffield Hallam every year, with free accommodation and an annual allowance of £3,000. The University often receives more applications for the scheme than it can award, so the new Vice Chancellor's Unite Scholarship - announced today during National Care Leaver's Week - will offer a further chance for a young care leaver to benefit from this great opportunity. And to make this available, the Unite Foundation will very kindly provide the accommodation element of the bursary for the successful student. Professor Philip Jones, Vice-Chancellor of Sheffield Hallam said: -At Sheffield Hallam University, we believe that higher education is a transformative experience. And we believe that every young person deserves that opportunity, regardless of their background or the personal challenges they face. -The University has a number of students who are care leavers - amongst the highest of any university in the UK. And they face very difficult challenges in their lives with just 6% entering some form of higher education compared to 34% of the rest of the population. -The Unite Foundation shares our passion for providing transformative education to care leavers and already generously provide five bursaries each year for young people to study at Sheffield Hallam, so it is wonderful that we can now extend this to provide another care leaver with the same support. Jenny Shaw, chair of the Unite Foundation said: -The legacy of the new Vice Chancellor's Unite Scholarship will be a talented young person on their way to earning a degree. The Unite Foundation and Sheffield Hallam share the same hopes for wider participation in higher education, and this excellent new scholarship is proof of our determination to do something about it.