I am collecting pennies to help fundraise for my friend Rowan who peacefully lost her fight with Spinal Muscular Atrophy Type 1B at just 18 months old on 23rd November 2012.

SMA is the number 1 genetic killer of children under 2 and currently there is no cure. However the SMA Trust are working with scientists to find one. There is a small glimmer of hope with several therapies entering clinical trials in humans.

1 in 40 people carry the SMA gene, a child of two carriers has a 1 in 4 chance of having a child with SMA. SMA affects motor neurons in the spinal cord, resulting in muscular weakness, leading to severe disability and the possibility of a limited life span.

I want to collect a whole mile of pennies. If you lay pennies next to eachother there would be 84,480 pennies in a mile! I used my mummy's computer to Google that a penny is 3/4 of an inch so 4 pennies is 3 inches and multiply both by 4 so the base number 3 is a foot or 12 inches and then there are 16 pennies to a foot and a mile is 5,280 feet. So multiply 5,280 by16 to get 84,480...phew!

Therefore if I collect a mile of pennies it would equate to £844. 80! That would buy a lot of chocolate buttons and Peppa Pig toys but instead this money will go towards Team Rowan in their efforts to raise money for The SMA Trust.

Thanks for taking the time to visit my JustGiving page.

Love Brooke, aged 2 1/2 years x

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