Charity begins at home. When Joe Hale found out that his 17-year-old brother had cancer, he was understandably shocked and upset.
When someone you know and love is diagnosed with cancer, it turns your world upside down. This is especially apparent when that person is young; you're not prepared. You've heard about young people getting it, you've read about it, maybe even donated money to someone suffering. But when it's in your own home... it takes your breath away.
Soon Joe's brother, Sam, began getting treatment and he realised just how great the doctors, nurses and other workers were. They helped Sam, but also helped his family cope with the situation.
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Sam and Joe. Credit: Supplied
He told TheLADbible: "Many people do amazing individual efforts such as marathon runs etc. to raise money for charity. However, I wanted to do something that would bring together my friends, family and the wider community. What better way than through football?"
He set up the Brentwood v Cancer charity football match and auction. Basically, it's 36 guys playing a game of football. But the passion they showed shone through. In the end, 500 people came to watch them.
Joe explained: "We sold tickets for a £3 minimum donation, but a lot of the money we received was through the sale of auction prizes.
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"We were lucky enough to have football shirts signed by John Terry, the Chelsea team, Mark Noble, the Spurs team, Thierry Henry, and Anthony Joshua even signed some boxing gloves.
"In the end we raised just shy of £14,000 for Macmillan."
Joe and two of his other brothers. Credit: Supplied
They made sure that every possible base was covered. They were proactive and passionate and as a result raised a shit-tonne of cash for Macmillan.
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Luckily, Sam got the all-clear late last year, but Joe added: "He couldn't have done it without organisations such as Macmillan and Teenage Cancer Trust."
This year, they're organising another football match, but donating all funds raised to the Teenage Cancer Trust. It's taking place in Brentwood on Sunday 30th April (on the Bank Holiday weekend).
They've put together this video and I think you'll agree that these LADs are taking it very seriously.
Credit: James Matthews Media
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Joe said: "Even though we want to push our event to be as successful as possible, something we are really interested in is encouraging others to do the same.
"Interestingly, Macmillan said they had never seen a football match to this scale (even though it was relatively local) and commented on how effective the use of football had been to raise money in our instance, especially as there were no famous players involved, just a community.
"This led to us winning the Macmillan Young Champion Award for South East & London for our event which is soon to be announced."
Amazing.
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But they need our help.
They're seeing if anyone can donate any similar items to last year's event that they can auction. If you reckon you can help, email [email protected] and we'll pass on the information.
Alternatively, you can donate to their cause by visiting their JustGiving page here.
We want to showcase YOUR stories. What are you doing to benefit the community? Is your mate doing something awesome for someone else? If there's something that you reckon deserves an article on TheLADbible - we want to know about it. Email us with your story - [email protected] and you could be featured.
Topics: Lad of the week