A baton kept moving for 24 hours between Highbury Fields and the Emirates has raised £10,233 for youth homelessness charity Depaul UK, across 137 donations.
A baton was carried without stopping for 24 hours around Highbury Fields and the Emirates Stadium last weekend, and the £10,233.56 it has raised goes to Depaul UK, the charity working to end youth homelessness.
Move 24 for Depaul started at 1pm on Friday 18 September and finished at 1pm on Saturday 19 September. Dozens of Highbury residents, friends, family and regulars from Nick’s Bootcamp took turns to keep the baton moving through the afternoon, the night and the following morning.
The organiser is Nick Sampson, a fitness coach who runs bootcamp sessions on Highbury Fields. He said the wet September night made the challenge tougher, and that it was worth enduring for a cause that supports young people who can face far harsher conditions without anywhere safe and warm to call home.
“Whatever people’s individual views are, I think we can all agree that a scared, vulnerable young person with nowhere safe and warm to call home is completely unacceptable,” he said.
The campaign page recorded £10,233.56 from 137 donations when we checked it on 23 September, with a further £1,932.00 in Gift Aid on top. £9,733.56 of that came in online and £500.00 was given offline. Across the two events, in 2024 and 2026, the organisers say Move 24 has now raised more than £20,000 for the charity.
Twenty-four hours, two loops
The plan the organisers published before the event split the day in three. From 1pm on the Friday until 11pm, the baton went round a loop of roughly 600 metres on Highbury Fields, with food, drinks and a game of rounders alongside it. From 11pm until 6am it moved down to the Emirates Stadium, on a loop of about 740 metres, based in the alcove by the Tony Adams statue. At 6am it came back up to the fields for a bootcamp session and the last laps.
“Moving” was defined generously. The organisers set the bar at anything above a walk, and said plainly that speed did not matter: “your speed means nothing here, you could argue the slower the better”.
Nick Sampson wrote on the campaign page that the length of the challenge was chosen to make a point about how long a night is without a bed.
“Depaul UK is trying to end youth homelessness. The idea behind this 24 hour challenge is to symbolise the relentlessness of being without somewhere to call home, when we are tucked up in bed at 1am the person on the street we walked past at 5pm is still living that reality and most probably still sitting on that floor.”
Where the money goes
Depaul UK is registered charity number 802384 and works with young people who are homeless or at risk of it. On its own impact page the charity reports supporting 11,152 young people across its services, providing 4,155 safe nights through its Nightstop network of volunteer hosts, and reaching 14,777 school children with preventative workshops.
The charity’s giving page prices its work in units a donor can picture: £20 covers the travel for a young person to reach a Nightstop host along with their own toiletries, £54 buys pyjamas and a change of clothes, and £127 pays for a mediation and support session with a family in conflict, which Depaul calls the leading cause of youth homelessness.
What it means for you
The JustGiving campaign is still open, so the total on it will keep moving after this article is published. Donations go to Depaul UK directly and Gift Aid adds 25p to every pound for UK taxpayers who tick the box.
Nick’s Bootcamp runs two in-person sessions a week on Highbury Fields, at 6.30pm on Mondays and Thursdays, which is where most of the people carrying the baton came from. Anyone wanting to reach the organisers can do so through yourfoundation.uk or on Instagram at @nicksbootcamp.
If you are running something in the borough and want it covered, send it to us through Got a story. More things happening locally are listed on our things to do in Islington page.
Sources: Nick Sampson, Nick’s Bootcamp, by email on 23 September 2026; the Move 24 2026 campaign on JustGiving, checked 23 September 2026; the Move 24 event page on yourfoundation.uk; Depaul UK and its impact figures.
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