Steve Pritchard, MD and founder of Leeds agency It Works, is on a mission to raise as much money as possible to honour his 11-year-old daughter after she died suddenly in her sleep six months ago.
Matilda, who he affectionately calls ‘Tills’, displayed no symptoms before she passed away on 3 April with an undiagnosed heart condition. Her heartbroken parents, Steve Pritchard and wife Anna, later discovered that it was a rare condition called arrhythmogenic right ventricular cardiomyopathy (ARVC), which affects 1 in 1,000 people.
As a way to channel their family grief and to celebrate Matilda’s life, the family are determined to honour her memory and have been fundraising for Keep Britain Tidy – as Matilda was passionate about tackling littering.
“I’ve been doing digital PR for 20 years, I wanted to put my skills and experience into a channel for my own wellbeing and grief,” Steve Pritchard, tells Prolific North.
“She was a bright, happy, bubbly, healthy little girl. She had autism, so she was always sensitive, but was great at school, loved by friends and everyone who knew her. We used to do litter-picking together, we’d take the dog for a walk around Pudsey and she would get a hi-vis on with a little litter-picker and fill up the bags.”
Unbeknownst to Matilda, Pritchard had also nominated her for a Blue Peter Green badge, an accolade for young people passionate about nature and the environment.
“She was over the moon, absolutely buzzing when she received it. She loved Blue Peter, we still watch it as a family. She always used to say: ‘Daddy, I dream of a world without litter’. She was always proud when she had three or four bags full and whenever she would see fellow litter-pickers out in the area, she’d wave.”
An initial fundraising goal of £11,213 was set to represent Matilda’s birthday on 11 February 2013.
“We smashed it in two weeks. We were just blown away by the support of LinkedIn, friends, family, clients, colleagues and ex-colleagues from years ago.”
After hitting the original target with enough funds to sponsor one year of the charity’s Eco-Schools environmental education programme on litter, Pritchard didn’t want it to end there.
“I’m a digital PR person and digital marketer, so I wasn’t done with that initial year. I sat with the family and I thought ‘Matilda was meant to be going to secondary school in September’ so let’s do it for the five years, where she should have been at secondary school.
“I got my campaign head on, reverse-engineered what our target was, how many people we needed to hit, and properly marketed the cr*p out of it.”
Now, the family have upped their fundraising goal and are working with Keep Britain Tidy to raise £42,000 to sponsor the charity’s Eco-Schools environmental education programme over the next five years.
“They [Keep Britain Tidy] have been fantastic. There is a dedicated page, usually it’s a corporate sponsorship, but they’ve tweaked it so it’s Matilda’s page and legacy.”
“I had four days off then I was back into it”
As we approach World Mental Health Day on 10 October, we also discuss the difficulties he’s faced as the leader of a small agency while dealing with grief.
“We are a smaller agency, so the basics from HR to payroll, I do it. Two days after Matilda passed, I had to do payroll. I had to put my big boy pants on and be a boss. This is my responsibility as an employer to do this basic legal requirement, get it done, and take a step back. I don’t know any different,” he explains.
“I have a support group and they talk about having compassionate leave and all those types of things – that’s great but I think I had four days off and then I was back into it.
“I had a client pitch the Thursday after, so I suppose this campaign is my approach to managing. In a way, it’s probably not healthy but for me, it works. It’s meant for the last six months I’ve managed to stay vertical and working, rather than just going to bed and staying in there.”
You can find more information about the campaign and donate to Matilda’s fundraising campaign on JustGiving here.
