What started as a small group of friends deciding to take part in the Bermuda Day Marathon Derby raising $1,000 each to help the children at Dame Marjorie Bean Hope Academy ended up as the biggest ?team? to take part in the 96-year old race and collected more than $110,000.

The phenomenal accomplishment means special-needs children on the Island can look forward to specialised summer camps in North America next year, respite care to allow children and parents to have independent time away from their home and specialised training in music and art.

The fund-raising effort also means a ?tracking system? can be installed at the school to allow children who use wheelchairs to move about certain areas of the school with greater independence.

All of this has been made possible by the efforts of a team of runners that snowballed in size from 20 to 83 by race day.

Chris Silvester, vice-president of the Friends of Hope Academy charity, said: ?It started with the idea of getting 20 mates to run and each had to raise $1,000 ? then all charity directors got involved including the children of Hope Academy who held a Move-A-Thon. The Move a-Thon idea was to get the children and staff to walk the 13.3 miles over a period of weeks by walking part of the race distance each day, as due to their disabilities they are unable to run on race day, while themselves gaining individual sponsorship.

?XL Foundation signed up for Team Hope by generously providing appropriate running shirts for the team to cope with the heat conditions on race day. Tokio Millennium Re then came on board after I mentioned it to my friend Simon Arnott who works there.?

Mr. Arnott in turn approached his company president Tatsuhiko Hoshina to ask if he would sponsor him and this resulted in Tokio Millennium Re and their staff pledging $15,000 to the cause.