It actually happened! I cannot believe we finally did it - after 14 months of planning it, the day of the dive was Saturday 9th June. 

In total, there were 11 skydivers in our group from Barts and The London - including nine students (2 hygeine & therapy student and 7 dental students), one parent and Dr Woodhoo (one of our dental clinical tutors). I think I speak for all of us when I say it was an EPIC day, and most us want to do another skydive in the near future.

It is true what they say, the adrenaline rush you get from jumping out of a plane is totally addictive. You all have to try it - a bucket list moment for sure. 

We arrived at the skydive site at the Old Sarum Airfield, just outside of Salisbury on a beautiful Saturday morning for 9am and were up in the plane all geared up with our jumpsuits, hats, goggles and harnesses on by ~10:30am. We all jumped from 10,000ft, so after the plane had taken off it took about 15 minutes to get up to the right altitude, then the light turned from red to green, meaning we were ready to go, the plane hatch door opened and one-by-one we shuffled towards the door, led mostly by the expert skydivers attached to our back and jumped out! 

We were freefalling for ~30 seconds and supposedly all reached speeds of 120mph during the free fall before the parachutes were deployed at ~4,000ft. The skies were blue, only a few clouds in the sky and it was such a beautiful view to enjoy as we slowly descended back down to terra firma over the Salisbury plains, enjoying breathtaking views of the English countryside. 

This skydive was done to raise money for Dentaid, and collectively we raised almost £4,000 - such a great, meaningful amount of money for the charity. 

I would love to do one again, and I certainly hope we as a dental society do it again or something similar next year, perhaps an abseil?! 

Here are some group photos from the day:
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We are so excited and cannot wait for Friday 9th March to come around! 

One of our most special events, a pub crawl that has been going on for nearly 70 years now is coming up. Seriously, this is a highlight, one of the events definitely not to be missed. What makes the Dental Beer Race extra special is that all the proceeds raised from this super fun event are donated to charity. 

This year, of course we have chosen to support Dentaid, a wonderful dentally-related charity who we are proud to be fundraising for. 

It's also a fancy dress night, where we encourage people to come in group outfits. The best dressed team on the night will win a prize (to be decided).

Just because it is called the DENTAL beer race, that definitely does not mean this event is only for dental students. We welcome anyone who loves pub crawls, enjoys fancy dress nights and/or is keen to raise money for charity to come. Bring your friends, all of them! Bring your neighbours too! 

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It is with great excitement that we let you all know about this awesome opportunity we have arranged to support Dentaid, the dental aid charity we are supporting this year. 
 
Please visit the Dentaid website to find out more about this fantastic charity that delivers incredible dental aid services both in the UK with their mobile dental unit and abroad!! 
 
We have arranged for anyone interested to do a skydive. We will be doing this all together as a group, jumping out of a plane at 10,000 feet! The skydive will take place on Saturday 9th June 2018, so it will be in term 3 but we are planning it all from now! :)
 
If you are genuinely interested then you will need to confirm your place by paying a £50 deposit by the end of January! There’s a limited number of spaces available, so we will allocate on a first-come-first-served basis. Everyone will have to commit to raising a minimum of £300 for Dentaid on top of the deposit payment, and you will need to have all the money raised and donated online 6 weeks prior to the skydive or make up the difference from your own pocket.

It will be an unforgettable experience so don’t miss out!!! We will have Go Pro cameras to capture the whole experience :)
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Rest assured, you will all be safely attached to a professional so no previous experience is necessary, but it will help to not be afraid of heights, or at least think of this as a good way for you to get over your fear!!!

This year, we recruited a group of dental students to start a Movember squad, who all grew a moustache through the month of November. The team was co-ordinated by Aniqah, our Charities Co-Ordinator with help from Nazgol Mashaikhirad (BDS2), Brinthan Neshakaran (BDS4) and Amina Arshad (BDS2) - three dental students who are involved with our DentSoc Charity Squad.

The team of lads who grew moustaches includes:

• Ali Nasser (BDS3)
• Zamin Hussein (BDS2)
• Asad Ali (BDS1)
• Ashleigh Mungur (BDS2)
• Balveer Boodoo (BDS2)
• Rajan Chandar (BDS2) 

And together, the team collectively raised an incredible £537 for the Movember Foundation Charity.

It is all to raise awareness and funds for Men's Health diseases such as prostate cancer, testicular cancer and mental health conditions #stopmendyingtooyoung 

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It was an absolute pleasure for us to recently have invited Rebecca Brigden (known as Bex), the Corporate Relations and Fundraising Manager from Dentaid to come into the dental school on Wednesday 8th November to be present and representing Dentaid at our November Trade Fayre. We invited Dentaid to have a free stand at our trade fayre allowing our students the opportunity to directly engage with Dentaid and find out about the wonderful charity we have chosen to support this year as a dental school. 

Exciting new developments - we are in the process of setting up an opportunity for any adrenaline-junkie dental students to abseil down the Arcelormittal Orbit which is the UK's highest freewill abseil on the UK's tallest sculpture! It's an awesome way to see London, at 262 feet above the city.

If any student would be interested in doing this, we need a £50 deposit to confirm your spot, and then a minimum fundraise of £200. 

So that's the update for now - watch this space as nothing is confirmed just yet but could be very soon. If you're interested - please get in touch with Aniqah to find out more.

​Yours,
Ali
Dental Society President
2017-2018

Really excited to be able to now confirm that Oral-B are kindly supporting our Charity Ball by donating one Genius 9000 toothbrush that we can add to the auction list. 

All money raised by auctioning their top of the range toothbrush will go towards Dentaid. 

Thanks for the support!
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Ali 
DentSoc President 2017/2018

I am so excited to be able to write this update. We have now confirmed that there will be a skydiving opportunity for any interested/crazy/brave Barts and The London dental students to jump out of a plane at 10,000/15,000ft!!!

We have arranged the skydive for June 9th 2018, so it is still a while away, but nonetheless, it will be happening soon. From January 2018, we will begin to promote this opportunity properly within the dental institute, and the aim is to have a confirmed list of 20 students who are definitely going to do the sky dive by February 2018. 

Then, those 20 students will each need to raise £300 for Dentaid. What an amazing way to raise money and profile for our supported charity, by getting a huge adrenaline rush and hopefully having a lot of fun in the process. 

I am personally 100% up for it, and have already told my mum. She wasn't happy to hear it, and tried to convince me not to do it for about 3 hours, but I've told her now and that was the hardest thing I needed to do.

If you are a Barts and The London dental student reading this, and are also interested then please get in touch with myself (Ali Nasser), or Aniqah to find out more.

Eeeeek! So exciting :D

Yours,
Ali 
Dental Society President (2017/2018)

This year, we have started planning our new charitable initiatives early on! Since its all brand new, it is exciting because it means we have a clean slate, and full creative licence to do things how we want. 

It all started by creating a shortlist of 10x charities that we would choose from. Ali and Aniqah compiled the shortlist, to consist of 5x dentally related charities and 5x non-dental charities. We set up polls and the DentSoc committee then chose their preferences - with the results all in, the most selected charity was Dentaid, and so that's who we went ahead to confirm as our selected charity to support this year! 

Once that was confirmed, we then had to contact QMSU to officially tell them about our plans, as we have to "adopt" the charity. We can now say that we have indeed adopted Dentaid, and since then we have had a conference call with the lovely Bex, the Dentaid Fundraising and Corporate Relations Manager. The telephone meeting with Dentaid went perfectly, and we are now even more excited to be supporting Dentaid, happy with our decision :) 

The next steps, are to get properly planning exactly how, what and when we will be doing this year in order to raise money. Not just that, the exciting news is that we can also potentially send some of our students and staff to actively support Dentaid in the UK through Oral Health Promotion missions. 

We are currently preparing the Charitable Activity Calendar for term 1 of the 2017/2018 academic year, and are also recruiting a mini Charities team to support Aniqah with planning and organising the Inaugural Charity Ball, which will take place in November 2017! 

So yeah....that's the update for now. We are really excited and hope you reading this are too! Watch this space for more blog post updates on what's going on and how you can get involved 

All the best, 

Ali Nasser
DentSoc President 2017/2018