Mark your calendars because MS Awareness Week is back! This year, it runs from 22 – 28 April, and we’re hoping it'll be bigger and better than ever before.






For the second year in a row, we’re teaming up with our friends at MS Together, the MS Trust, MS-UK, the Neuro Therapy Network (formerly MS National Therapy Centres), Shift.ms and Overcoming MS.

Our information booklets for family, friends and carers have all been reviewed and updated.

• For family and friends - when someone close to you has MS
• Supporting someone with MS
• Advanced MS - a carer's handbook

Any copies sent out since 5 February will be the latest versions (all dated October 2023). Thank you to all the volunteers who reviewed this information. Our web information for family, friends and carers has also been updated.

The MS Society £4,000 raffle launched last month. It’s a fun way to support our work and be in with a chance to win one of over 20 prizes. Every £1 ticket sold in our raffles helps to fund vital research into MS, as well as much needed support and services for the 130,000 people living with MS in the UK.

Our new-look main website is set to go live early April. As well as a fresh new face there are some important changes that will help us develop stronger, deeper and longer-lasting relationships with our audiences.

More than just a pretty face

The new website will include a refreshed colour palette and new fonts, which will both improve accessibility.

If you’re eagle-eyed, you may already have noticed that our refreshed new brand identity is now rolling out across the organisation at a fast pace. With new bold colours, new accessible font, a new refined logo, and new illustrations… it’s all systems go! And there’s loads more to come.



We hope that you enjoy our new brand and how it positively represents our community. As well as being vibrant, engaging, and modern, it’s highly accessible, flexible, and inclusive.

The London Marathon 2024 is just around the corner and we have a team of over 300 runners taking on 26.2 miles for the MS Society. Together they’re hoping to raise an incredible £700,000, so we really want to ensure that they have a great experience and feel supported along the whole route.

We need your help!

This year we need the help of volunteers to join us in making lots of noise and cheering on our fantastic team. Volunteers are a vital part of all our cheer points along the route.

We’ve taken a look back at some of the things we shared with you through our monthly newsletters in 2023. It was a busy year for our organisation and volunteers! Here’s a reminder of some of the things we covered.

We celebrated our volunteers and our 70th anniversary

This year we wanted to highlight and celebrate the diversity of our volunteer network and give thanks for the different ways in which they contribute. We did this through:

We’ve had some staff changes in the Volunteering and Community Networks Team that we wanted to let you know about.

Sam Walker, Executive Director of Services Support, leaves us on 9 February after more than six years at the MS Society. Sam has decided to take some time out before taking on her next challenge. We’re delighted that Gavin Atkins has just joined us as interim cover. Gavin has spent the last 11 years at the mental health charity, Mind, and has recently stepped down as their Associate Director of Communities.

We want to make sure that everyone who contacts us, for whatever reason, has an experience that meets their needs. So, we're conducting research into the different ways people interact with us — volunteering, campaigning, donating, using our services and support, etc.

We’d like to hear about your experiences of dealing with the MS Society. What do we do well, and what could we do better?

You can help improve the services and support we deliver to you and everyone who needs them.

We're pleased to introduce the Breathing Space Project for unpaid carers in Wales until March 2025. The project, which is funded by the Welsh Government, extends support to those caring for people living with MS by providing short breaks.

Whether you, or someone you know, is caring for a person full-time or for a few hours a week, for example, by collecting a person’s medication or providing transport to hospital appointments, Breathing Space may be able to offer some extra support.