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Kick Asthma Volunteer Newsletter
November 2007

Kick Asthma Holidays
This year's Kick Asthma holidays were as eventful as ever with an interesting mix of highlights.

As usual Edinburgh kicked off first where everyone enjoyed a bit of yoga as well as lots of swimming and arts and crafts. This was also the holiday where DICE Bear appeared for the first time. For those of you who don't know DICE, his is ICE's long-lost daddy!

After this followed Nantwich, which was quite a calm holiday considering the amount of sweets and cola the children consumed during the week!

Next up was Northern Ireland, where the children and volunteers enjoyed water fights, storytelling and a murder mystery evening.

This was followed by Banbury, where the volunteers demonstrated fantastic teamwork to ensure the children had a wonderful time, visiting Warwick Castle, making rockets and dressing up.

During the final week of the summer we held two holidays at the same time; Wales and Southampton. Wales was a fairly small holiday, which enabled the volunteers to really get to know the children, while in Southampton the week was dominated by the bear war! This involved ICE and DICE being held to ransom on several occasions - however, you'll be pleased to hear they are both now safe and well and enjoying their winter breaks away from Kick Asthma, conserving their energy in preparation for next year.

DICE at Thorpe Park!

Facts and figures
This year:

• 176 children attended Kick Asthma Holidays in the UK
• 95 volunteers gave up their time for Kick Asthma

"I learnt that having asthma doesn't stop you having fun and it was good to be with other people who also have asthma."
- Girl aged 10 years

Sarah Leonard Award
The Sarah Leonard Award was set up by the parents of Sarah Leonard in order to honour outstanding volunteers. Sarah was a PEAK (the old name for Kick Asthma) volunteer who died in 2002 from an asthma attack. All children on the holidays vote for their favourite volunteer. This year's nominees were:

• Stephanie Agnew
• Dave Hayward
• David Kirby
• Helen Owen
• Kevin Pearce
• Lucy Wheater
• Paul Willet

The winner was Stephanie Agnew who has volunteered on the Kick Asthma holidays in Northern Ireland for three years. She will be meeting with Sarah Leonard's family in the new year to receive her award.

Sarah Leonard Award Winners

Health group meeting
At Asthma UK we continually review our healthcare policies and procedures for the Kick Asthma holidays to ensure we are working in line with best practice at all times. To help us do this, Kick Asthma health professionals attend a Working Group, and the next meeting will be held on Saturday 12th January 2008 at the Asthma UK office in London.

If you are a health professional and want to attend the meeting, please contact Jenny at jparry@asthma.org.uk

Volunteer day
Thank you to all of those who came along to the Volunteer Day on Saturday 13th October. The day was full of discussion and ideas, and hopefully a good chance for you to catch up with friends from this year's holidays.

Wishing you all a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year from Asthma UK!