A martial arts school in Swindon is taking part in a 24-hour sponsored event to raise awareness of two life-changing diseases.

Instructors and students at Gracie Swindon in Old Town are raising money for Crohn’s and Colitis UK, a charity supporting people suffering from the two main forms of inflammatory bowel disease.

Instructor Jacob Sworder organises the event every two years, beginning in 2020, after being hugely impacted by Crohn’s disease, watching his dad suffer from colitis, and finding out several of his students had been personally affected by the disease.

On Saturday, September 21, they will partake in non-stop Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu sparring from 12:30pm throughout the night and into Sunday, with the aim of smashing their £5,000 target and exceeding the £3,800 total raised in 2022.

The Just Giving page can be found here

He said: “Crohn’s and Colitis do a lot of good work on the research front, it’s one of those invisible illnesses where it’s not always obvious the person is sick or can even get to the point of disability at times.

“They do a lot of support to help people get PIP and stuff like that and they’re a good charity overall supporting people with an illness that people aren’t always super aware of.

“When you start talking to people, everybody seems to know people who has Crohn’s but they don’t really know what it is. It’s an illness that has affected me and affected my family hugely. Now that I’m fortunate enough to be in reasonably good health, I’d like to pay it back a bit.

“On Saturday, people will tag in and tag out and it tends to get difficult around two in the morning. It’s a bit of an endurance event. Kids have six hours out of the 24 that they can contribute to it, with the hope that parents and families will chip in and sponsor them too.

“Just for fun we’ve got holiday clubs supervising a kids' sleepover, they pay a £30 donation and they get to camp out on the mats. It means either mum or dad can train through the night or have a night out.

“If people want to swing by and say hello or contribute they can or if they want to check out the school then I’m more than happy to give free intros to people.”