"Let the children come to me; do not hinder them, for to such belongs the kingdom of God." (Mark 10:14)

The Danceathon is done. Lucy Drummond and her brother Ollie danced at the Wynyard Pub in Billingham on Friday 29 May, ten in the morning until ten at night, and raised £2,000 for Tourette's Action UK.

Twelve hours is a long time to keep moving. There is a photo for every hour of it, each marked with a green tick, so you can watch the day wear them down across the montage on this page. Early on it is all grins and red tambourines held up in the air. By hour eight someone has captioned a shot "We've reached hysteria." The eleven-hour photo admits "The pace has definitely changed", and you can see that it has. "Done" is all the final frame says, taken close to ten at night. A watch worn through the whole thing read 42,585 steps and over eighteen miles by twenty past ten, none of it going anywhere, all inside the one function room.

They were not alone in there. The family danced alongside them in matching Tourette's Action shirts, and friends came and went through the day to keep the two of them company on the floor.

If you have followed Lucy at St. Thomas of Canterbury, Billingham, none of this will surprise you. There is a track record now. Last autumn she walked the block near her home a thousand times in twelve days, often before school, for Stichell House in Greatham where her great-nana May Hutchinson had lived. The target was £100. She brought in £1,500, put it towards "May's" so the residents had a shop of their own, and was given a High Sheriff Award for it. A Macmillan coffee morning at the same pub before Christmas quietly took £1,000 in cash. With this latest effort the money raised across the three causes now comes to £4,500, all of it inside a year.

Ollie went the full twelve hours himself this time, and the cause is close to home. Lucy has a cousin, Gabrielle, who lives with Tourette's. The whole family has had to learn what the condition is, adapt the way they do things around it, and do their share of explaining it to other people. That is the world Lucy has grown up in. When she stood up at Holy Rosary before the dancing and spoke to the congregation about Tourette's, what it is and why she cares about it, she knew exactly what she was talking about. She spoke so well, so clearly, and with such passion, that when she finished the church broke into applause. A girl of nine, holding a church like that.

Tourette's is a neurological condition that causes involuntary movements and sounds, known as tics. The idea that it always means shouting swear words is wrong. That happens to only a small minority. For most people the hard part is the effort of holding tics in, and the strain when they can't. Then there is everyone else, the staring at school, an interview that turns into an ordeal, the nerve it takes to go out in public when your own body and voice won't behave. Tourette's Action UK supports people living with the condition and helps everyone else understand it.

Understanding is the bit Lucy keeps coming back to. She does not just want people to give, she wants them to know what Tourette's actually is, so the staring stops and the misjudging with it. Nelson Mandela said that education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world. That is what Lucy reached for when she got up to speak. Ollie reached for it too. Gabrielle is his cousin as much as hers, and he wanted to be in this every bit as much as she did. Speaking at church was never his way in. Dancing was. So he danced, the full twelve hours, right at his sister's side, and that is its own kind of telling people what matters.

The £2,000 came from family and friends, from sponsors, and from the retiring collections at both Holy Rosary and St John's. Thanks too to the Wynyard Pub, which gave over a room for the whole twelve hours and asked for nothing in return. The family want to thank everyone who got behind them, the people who sponsored, who danced a while to keep the two of them going, who gave at the collection or simply turned up on the day. Without all of that the money would not be sitting there now, and they know it.

So here is the small dare buried in all this. Lucy has done the hard part. Before the week is out, go and find one thing about Tourette's that you did not know this morning. Look it up, ask, read what Tourette's Action UK has to say. The bucket was never really the point. A nine-year-old has set the bar. See if you can clear it.