The Sussex Beacon Relay returns for another year at The Grand Brighton Half Marathon, to raise vital funds for our services providing specialist care and support for people living with HIV.
We are thrilled to have a new company involved in 2019, Sussex Innovation, a business incubation network for start-ups, scale-ups and growing companies. They support new businesses to grow and become sustainable by providing a range of business support services and for those who need it, flexible office space. The original Innovation Centre is based on the University of Sussex Campus in Falmer and in 2016 they opened a second site in East Croydon, with a third site in central Brighton opening this year.
Not only are we delighted to have the Sussex Innovation joining us for the first time, but they are also entering not one, but three teams into the relay, and have encouraged member companies to sign up too.
“We came across the Sussex Beacon relay on the Brighton half marathon website and initially just a few avid runners in the team discussed entering. After gauging interest from across the company, we quickly realised we would need to enter not one, but three teams to enable everyone to take part. For most, this will be their first time taking part in a running event and we’re thrilled that other businesses in our community will be joining us on the day.”
Sussex Innovation is a membership organisation and many of their member companies take up tenancy, renting an office within one of their Centres. Their Centres have a strong community focus and so they wanted to leverage the ability to involve not just their internal team, but to bring together the member companies within the Centre too.
“Our member companies Ambiental and Race Nation have also entered teams and Race Nation have provided their fundraising platform for the event. Although there will be a little healthy competition between companies, the whole community will be involved in a combined fundraising effort to raise as much as we can for the Sussex Beacon.”
“Our 12-strong team of runners will be asking their friends, family and professional networks to donate via our Sports Giving pages. The Centre will ran two successful fundraising events: the great SINC bake-off on the 8th of February and a valentines themed fundraising event with food, drinks and games on Thursday 14th."
The Sussex Innovation teams will each be led by a member of their senior management team: Team Mike, Team Pete and Team Jane. They will be competing to run the fastest time, but are already competing to raise the highest fundraising total.
We wish all the teams at Sussex Innovation the best of luck, and thank all of their runners and supporters for really going that extra mile, putting the fun into fundraising, and raising vital funds that will make a huge difference to people living with HIV who need our services.
If you would like to support their runners, you can cheer them on with a donation here.
