My name is Duncan Soans. Each year, my brother and I pick a charity to raise money for through events we hold in our house and gardens. We started looking at local charities, but all the ones we were interested in had great reserves, and at that time didn't need our help, and we wanted our funds to make a difference. We just found out that our nephew had been diagnosed with ADHD, so we googled and found ADHD UK. We liked the fact that this was a new charity that was developed with, by and for people with ADHD. It was working to reduce the stigma, build awareness and have a positive impact on those with ADHD all things that resonated for us.

So in March 2022, we had a folk concert in our house. The music was provided by a group called Scarecrow and our family and friends did the cooking and people were very generous. They came to the dinner and concert as our guests and they donated a thousand pounds between them for the cause. We also encouraged them to watch the video on the website. My nephew helped me to explain about ADHD to them from his perspective. I've worked in diversity and inclusion programs all my adult life, and we did wonder if neurodiversity would be hard for people to relate to, but that wasn't the case at all. When we started to talk to some of our nearest neighbors they told us that their children had ADHD or Tourette's.

And in one case one of our neighbors told us that his son had been diagnosed with OCD in his late 40s. Others talked about colleagues with ADHD and what they brought to the workplace not just the support that they needed. A little while later, the mother of our nephew was looking for sponsorship for rugby shirts for a tournament. We decided we'd pay for the team to have ADHD UK on their logos on their shirts. We wondered how the children would react when they saw this on their kit. One of them said, why have I got ADHD on my shirt? He was excited because he had ADHD and then another piped up so do I. So that meant three of the team had ADHD but none of them had ever shared this information before.

Since that time, we've opened our garden up a couple of times once to a garden club led by a local garden center called Nicholson's and another to the Probus Compton Club of Banbury who came to their strawberry tea in the gardens. In total we've raised something like £1,500 but each time we talk to people we're very upfront about the need to support ADHD UK with money, but also to check back into the videos on the website. This way we hope that we can do our bit to support long term and sustainable changes that benefit all neurodiverse people.