Marc Risby's GoFundMe campaign to support the Hitchin Choices Special Needs Youth Group has rocketed far beyond its original target of £250, with £1,600 raised so far from forty donations.

Hitchin Choices provides essential social activities for over 20 young people with additional needs.

Since 2022 there have been sessions held every Friday at the Hitchin Youth Trust on Walsworth Road.

The end of a period of grant funding put the future of the group at risk.

To prevent the closure of this vital resource, Marc and the community have been working to raise funds independently.

Marc explained on his fundraising page that:

"Our daughter Cara attends a weekly special needs youth club - Hitchin Choices. It's one of the very few social groups for youths with additional needs locally and it's truly a special place providing accessible activities and events for 20+ young people".

"Unfortunately, we were recently told that our funding has been pulled and to continue we will have to find other money or have to close, so we've decided to go for it and raise the money ourselves".

Every week the club gives local youths the opportunity to make friends over a range of regular games, and exercises as well as a main activity for the evening. 

Past activities have included a dressing to impress catwalk and a photobooth, picnic making and garden games, animal modelling, online gaming and a special dance class based around show tunes. They enjoyed a visit to Legoland and a trip to a panto just before Christmas. 

Marc told Hitchin Nub News that – "our initial fundraising is to cover the essentials like insurance, first aid and safeguarding training etc for the volunteers as we need to cover all this ourselves now we are independent".

"Once this is taken care of we want to provide a wide range of accessible activities for the young people including practical things like craft and cookery, equipment for outdoor sports and fitness, games as well as to bringing in external specialists to run activities and events alongside our parent volunteers".