Thousands of pounds donated in memory of Vaila

A group of friends has raised more than £2,000 for mental health charity Mind Your Head – in memory of  Vaila Tait who died earlier this year.

The friends raised the sum in the run up to the local charity’s annual fun run held last month and were delighted with the total.

Ann-Marie Goudie, one of the driving forces behind the fund-raising, said: ‘We started fund-raising for Mind Your Head by holding a Chinese fund-raiser night at The Great Wall, sharing our fund-raising page through social media and taking part in The Mind Your Head Fun Run.”

“We chose Mind Your Head as we wanted to raise money for a local charity to further help people who suffer from mental health problems and also raise awareness within Shetland.

“In total we have raised £2,285.00, which we are totally overwhelmed with, a huge thank you to every single person who donated especially The Shetland Catch, Katy Shewan (who donated amazing prizes on the Chinese fund-raiser night) and The Great Wall.

“In memory of Vaila, including donations collected at her funeral, over £3,780 has been donated to Mind Your Head, it’s truly heart-warming to see how many people have supported us through this and we honestly can’t thank you enough, Vaila would be so proud”.

The main organisers of the team were sisters Shona Tait and Sadie Tait and a very good friend of Vaila, Ann-Marie Goudie, but they could not have done it without the help of the rest of the team members.

Vaila’s parents expressed their gratitude to everyone for their kindness and support.

The group made the decision to put the money towards Mind Your Head’s proposed mental health support service, and these first funds will help the charity with their plans to develop and launch the service in late 2015.

The Mind Your Head team thanked everyone connected to the “In Memory of Vaila” campaign for all of their hard work in their fund-raising.

Mind Your Head projet worker Chris Wright said: “This is an outstanding amount to have raised in such a small amount of time and we want to thank the team for their amazing efforts”.