Today’s guest is Mike Wilson, organizer of March of the Day ll in support of the Darby Rimmer MND Foundation an event that starts on the 21st of March.

Mike tells us how he became a charity event organiser, after years working in financial services. He describes the company he runs with his brother-in-law, Redwood Events Woody and highlights the transferrable skills which help him raise charitable

He explains how his passion for fundraising events started with his “Mad Auntie Ruth”, and how after her death he was conscripted to be the president of the branch of Save the Children where she had previously been the president.

When he and Woody started Redwood events, they were involved in arranging many different types of events for local charities and then worked with larger corporate charities raising funds for charities like BBC Children in Need. They developed an approach of walking from football ground to football ground or from sports ground to sports ground after Mike’s dad organised a charity walk to Oval cricket ground when he was a young boy

Their love of football introduced them to a lot of ex footballers and ex sports stars. This is how he became a friend of ex footballer, Stephen Darby and has been involved with raising funds for the Darby Rimmer charity to support Motor Neurone Disease (MND) from its conception.

We talk about MND, the various stages and how it affects people. Also, how the fundraising money supports awareness raising, provides people with grants to help fund the equipment they may need, and fund novel medical research.

Mike shares some great tips about fundraising for charities and honing what you do to improve it year on year.

To date Mike and Woody have raised ~1.3 million pounds, and they are hoping to have reached a total of £500k for the Darby Rimmer MND Foundation after the March of the Day 2 event..

Listen to hear about some of the footballers involved in this year’s March and find out how you could get involved to support MND.

You can contact Mike at

Darby Rimmer MND Foundation https://darbyrimmermnd.co.uk/
Redwood Events https://www.redwoodevents.co.uk/

Find out more about March of the Day II https://www.redwoodevents.co.uk/march-of-the-day-2025/

You can contact us at the following:
Dr Carol Sargent: https://sargentgroup.consulting/
Dr Tom Adler: https://getbide.com/

Our podcast guest today is Maxine Linnell. Maxine first tells us about her fascinating career, including working as psychotherapist for 30 years, alongside many other interesting teaching and facilitating positions. She trained in humanistic and Buddhist psychotherapy, and specialised in working with trauma. In her 60s she fulfilled her childhood dream: her first book was published.

Maxine talks about her close friend Kate, who died with Alzheimer’s during lockdown. When she recognised some changes in her own mind, she was determined to get a diagnosis quickly. She describes what happened to prompt this decision. Luckily, she got an appointment with a consultant neurologist. That was incredibly helpful: he was very respectful, he was honest, but he didn’t write her off. This consultant’s attitude was all about helping people to maintain their lives and carry on as normally as possible.

She talks about how scary it was after that initial diagnosis. She describes how she spent time preparing for what might come, and how she began to withdraw and lose her confidence about what she could do.

But then she explains how she made her big decision that she wasn’t going to withdraw from life. She describes how she continues to write, and how she has become a dementia advocate and activist. She shares how dementia has led her to be more outspoken, less diplomatic and to use writing to help dispel the myths people believe around dementia.

Maxine also shares her thoughts on the word Dementia and Alzheimer’s – and how she doesn’t like the way many people treat those with dementia. She finds it very helpful to be part of the dementia community where she meets other people who have dementia. But she thinks that everybody in society should treat each other with respect and care.

She describes how she has organised her world to live with dementia: she uses Alexa to help her remember what she has planned for each day, she has learned to recognise how some of her senses have changed, and sometimes she’s able to keep calm when something might scare her. But most importantly, she says understanding what’s happening enables her to make choices.

Hearing Maxine talk about her life with dementia is both moving and inspiring, and leads you to her vision: rather than think that everything someone living with dementia feels is a symptom of dementia, it’s important to listen deeply, to empathise and respond.

If you want to understand more about how Maxine lives with a diagnosis of dementia, we would encourage you to read her blog and poems on her website https://www.maxinelinnell.com/

You could also read Knowledge is Power, published by Innovations in Dementia. This booklet was written by people living with dementia, including Maxine. It is for people living with dementia, to support you in living as well as you can.

Dr Carol Sargent: https://sargentgroup.consulting/

Dr Tom Adler: https://getbide.com/

Our guest today is Michael Verde, from Texas, who from a very early age made the decision that he didn’t want to end up in a small universe and decided reading 100 pages a day would broaden his horizons.

Michael is now a writer, and founded Memory Bridge in 2003 after hearing someone on a documentary talk about people with dementia in a disparaging way and meeting someone from the Smithsonian Centre for Folk Life and Cultural Heritage.

Memory Bridge exists to end the emotional isolation of people with dementia. They bridge people with and without dementia to each other in life-changing ways, with educational programs hosted on three continents.

His passion is all about communicating with people, and he explains how people often feel disconnected from others, because they are not being emotionally cared for, creating emotionally isolation.

The training is designed to improve participants’ ability to attune to the emotions of a person with dementia and to establish a relationship of profound trust and mutual understanding, a foundation to all forms of person-centred care.

Michael describes how a Memory Bridge educational programmes use learnings from people with dementia to enable us to be present with each other in emotionally profound ways.

Memory Bridge participants are educated and encouraged to find a new way of being with people with dementia—a way that can turn awkward to flow, isolation to intimacy, and loneliness to companionship.

What is important is to give someone the kind of attention that enables people to feel that they belong and matter. He believes that communication is not a means to an end. It is the end.

‘Nobody is anybody without someone paying loving attention to him or her. ‘

You can find Michael’s website here: https://www.memorybridge.org/

You can contact us at the following:
Dr Carol Sargent: https://sargentgroup.consulting/
Dr Tom Adler: https://getbide.com/