Members of Falmouth and Exeter Students’ Union (FXU) took part in a jailbreak event and raised over £3,000 for mental health charity Mind.

Seven teams of three students apiece, set off from the Penryn Campus at 8am and headed in all directions to see who could get the furthest. After 36 hours of intense hitch-hiking, road-side dancing, ferry ticket bartering and plane line begging, students ended up anywhere from Scotland to Berlin, to the Portuguese island of Ilhadabarrata.

Jailbreak team The Internationals were the team that made it the furthest, getting to Ilhadabarrata, Portugal, and the team which made the most money was The Lions - Ryan Hughes, Emma Cronk and Rafael Thomas Kazimierz Swiderski raised £860 in the run-up to their journey.

But it wasn’t just about the teams who had made their escape. FXU is full of RAD (Raise and Donate) students who volunteered their time throughout the event, some of whom worked tirelessly into the night, manning the phones and tracking the teams from the office.

Hannah Smith, FXU RAD president, said: “Jailbreak was completely student-led this year. Having taken a lead on the organisation of volunteers to track the participants, I was so excited to see so many students volunteering their time over the 36-hour period. I was even more surprised to see the night shifts as one of the most popular times. The student engagement for RAD events has grown considerably over the past year which is great to see.”

Amanda Chetwynd-Cowieson, FXU president student experience, said: “This is easily one of FXU RAD’s most exciting events, both for students taking part and volunteer staff at HQ. The unbelievable positivity of all the teams was incredible to see; despite all of the challenges that this event naturally puts in their way they kept persevering and to have so many teams make it so far away from Falmouth is simply fantastic."