A FORMER Bishop Wordsworth’s School pupil and his fundraising partner in crime have won an award for their inventive fundraising challenge.

David Wood and Simon Painter took part in the Jailbreak challenge in October last year to raise money for children’s cancer charity KidsCan.

Dressed in orange boiler suits they left Manchester and tried to get as far away as possible in 30 hours without spending a penny. They travelled through seven countries, across three continents and raised over £1,500, which was pushed up to £2,500 with the PayPal sponsored prize of £1,000.

They won the Most Innovative Fundraiser at the inaugural Justgiving Awards.

Mr Painter said: “We had an absolutely fabulous evening and got to meet some fundraising heroes. We felt honoured to be among them.”

The team used a range of innovative technologies for the trip, from integrating social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter, to GPS tracking technology to show up-to-date information on where they had travelled. They also linked their Justgiving fundraising page to their website, allowing as much fundraising as possible.

Chris Swinton, events and community fundraiser for KidsCan said: “This award is thoroughly well deserved. As we receive no statutory funding, we rely entirely on people like Simon and David to keep us going, and it’s great that their achievements have been recognised. As we’re only a small charity, this is wonderful, and the donation from Pay Pal will go a long way in helping to cure children with cancer.”