During the past five months, a 20-strong team from KBR, one of ABF The Soldiers’ Charity’s corporate partners based in Leatherhead and Swindon, raised over £2,000 doing the Medicine Ball Challenge, where participants carry a medicine ball for seven days in order to represent the ‘invisible burden’ of mental health. The team finished the challenge on 10 October to mark World Mental Health Day.
We are delighted that the KBR team embraced the challenge with such enthusiasm and over such a long period. We are also grateful to them for the funds raised both for our charity and our partner charity Combat Stress.
Matt Jacobs, Vice President GSI Project and Programmes at KBR, said:
“This has been a fantastic challenge to embark on over the last 20 weeks; and symbolic ending on World Mental Health Day. We have been raising awareness of mental health both in KBR and externally on social media and through external conversations. It makes you think what other people are going through but you can’t see their medicine ball because it’s in their head. The prevention of mental health issues is just as important as curing them.”
Laura Holley, Director HSE KBR, said:
“This challenge was much harder than I imagined, but something that really lightened the load (literally) were the numerous offers of help. It certainly became a physical, visual and tangible representation of the invisible burden of mental health so many of us can experience.”
Others in the team spoke along similar lines. Joanna Joyce, a KBR specialist, said she had “found the challenge harder than expected but that mental health was a topic close to her heart due to family members’ struggles.” David Frak, a KBR supervisor, added that “the ball became a great talking point, and its visual and physical representation made people start to open up about their own experiences.”
The Medicine Ball Challenge was originally started in 2018 by two soldiers, Andy Perkins and Andy Unwin, to highlight the problem of mental health. So far it has raised over £76,000 for our charity and Combat Stress. Read more about it here: https://events.soldierscharity.org/event/view/medicine-ball-challenge
