If people are giving money, they usually like to know what it's for! So here is some more information on what students will be raising money for. You can use it to inform people about why you're doing it, and perhaps add information to your JustGiving page.
CMF's National Students' Conference is the highlight of the CMF year. It brings together around 350 medical students from the UK, Ireland and countries throughout Europe and Eurasia, for an inspirational weekend of teaching that helps them work out what it means to be a Christian in medicine.
Students from most of the 40 medical schools in the UK and Ireland are there, and get huge encouragement from making and renewing friendships with students just like them up and down the country.
Great Bible teaching, practical seminars at the interface of Christianity and medicine, prayer, praise and information about what God is doing in the Christian medical world all go to make up a weekend that can be life-changing.
There's always a great contingent of international students from countries across Europe and Eurasia, usually where the Christian medical movement is at a much earlier stage than here in the UK. We sponsor some of these students with the aim of supporting the development of their own Christian medical movements through their leadership – many stories could be told about how students have attended this conference and then gone home to set something up in their own countries, like Marco, the German elective student who came and then went back home and started their own annual conference, which has now been running for several years. The international students are always a huge encouragement for the UK students too, as we hear stories of their perseverance in very different circumstances.
Reports of recent student conferences are online here – 2007 and 2006 for instance.
But this great event comes at a price, and CMF invests around £20,000 a year in making sure that as many students as possible can get there. Every student delegate is significantly subsidised (about £35 per student) to make the conference fee affordable, and we give travel bursaries to help students get there. Some of the international students are fully subsidised to enable them to come. So this year we are aiming to raise £10,000 towards the cost of the conference so we can keep making it affordable for students and keep challenging, encouraging and inspiring them to be radical disciples for Jesus in the medical world.
