TWO remarkable Medstead children have raised more than £3,300 for charity with activities designed to “give something back” to the causes that supported their family while their younger sister, Nesta, was growing up.

Nesta, who is now four years old and is profoundly deaf and has a congenital cystic adenomatoid malformation, has just started at Medstead Primary School, supported by a place in the deaf unit.

Mum Jo Thomas said: “The cystic adenomatoid malformation is a large, benign lung lesion that renders that part of her lung ineffective. Nesta was operated on as a baby to remove one lobe of her lung that had been overtaken by a cyst, but another large cyst still remains in a second lung lobe.

“This could shrink, grow or remain the same. There is an ongoing risk of infection and she is not able to do activities involving pressure changes that might impact her lungs, for example flying on an aeroplane."

Mum Jo continued: “Nesta’s hearing is affected by Auditory Neuropathy Spectrum Disorder, which is due to damage to the hearing nerves. She is due for electro acoustic cochlear implants in the coming months in the hope that this will better enable her to hear high-frequency sounds such as ’s’, ’f’ and birdsong.”

With their little sister having to endure all these complications, her siblings have become conscious of the work of several charities who offer support for families and children struggling with such challenges.

As such, two years ago Tilly Thomas and her brother Theo, who both attended Medstead Primary School before moving on to Churcher’s College in Petersfield, organised a 24-hour bounce-athon in aid of the Sick Children’s Trust, raising a bounding £1,742.

Following their success, the fundraising siblings, now aged 14 and 11, decided to organise another event.

Tilly gathered the team together from two years ago, 10 friends and parents in total, and brainstormed ideas that culminated in the ‘5 Sense Challenge’ in aid of The Elizabeth Foundation, a chartiy that supports the development of listening and spoken language skills in children with hearing loss.

More than 13 teams of various ages took part in the event that resulted in points and medals.

The sense challenges featured:

*Sight, managed by Theo, which encouraged competitors to shoot a nerf gun and attempt to get the bullet through the hole, the smaller the hole the more points won.

*Touch, managed by Luke, where participants had to guess the object using only their sense of touch.

*Smell, managed by Lorna, to guess the flavour of a jelly, only using ones sense of smell.

Taste, managed by Bela, to guess the flavour of a crisp. *Hearing, managed by Max and Ollie, which invited an intrepid player, wearing a blindfold, to drive an electric car around a course with only the instructions of their team mates to go by.

The extra challenges included football darts, water carry, carrying water bombs, water soaking and the Stroop test.

Visit the Elizabeth Foundation at thelizabethfoundation.co.uk.