A very warm welcome to 2022 from everyone at Macmillan Caring Locally! We hope you had a relaxing and enjoyable festive season and the New Year finds you well.
You may have noticed that our blog page has been a little quiet over the last few months but there has been plenty going on and this post will give you all the detail you need to catch up with recent activity and also get an insight into our plans for the coming year.
As ever, you wonderful people have continued to support our hospice team with some fabulous fundraising activities and for that, we are, as ever, extremely grateful. The following are just a handful of events that took place over the last few months. In July, Sam Froude completed her Marathon walk to Stone Henge and raised £985 and Jessica Rendell bravely took on a skydive in August, raising £826. In September, we saw the return of the Sarah Green Golf Tournament which was another a huge success, raising £10,225.00 and we were delighted to see so many people joining Melodie’s walk this year which raised an incredible £14,053.50.
In October, the Flutterby Ball took place at The Cumberland Hotel in Bournemouth. Our very own Geraldine worked hard with the MCL team to make the evening an incredible success with over 140 people attending and a fabulous £9,000 raised for the charity. The room looked beautiful, the band and DJ were amazing and the lovely Dave Fitzgerald (MCL Ambassador) did a cracking job as compere for the evening, running the auction and entertaining the guests. We plan to hold the Flutterby Ball again this year but at a new and larger location due to the popularity of the event. Keep an eye out for details later in the year and grab your tickets to experience this wonderful evening. Two weeks after the ball, Jen from our fundraising team took on the crazy challenge of completing 24 CrossFit workouts in 24 hours at Complete Active in Mudeford. The turnout was incredible, raising over £4,500 for our Brick by Brick appeal and raising lots of awareness for our charity.
Many of you took part in the Bournemouth Run Festival in October and we had a fun-filled live quiz night at Portfield Hall in Christchurch in November. We took part in the Christchurch Living Advent Calendar at the Priory in December and our lovely long-term supporters at Boscombe and Southbourne Rotary hosted another Tree Of Lights event which raised around £3,000. We were overjoyed to see all of our wonderful Christmas Day Dippers back in their droves to take part in the White Christmas Dip again. The event has raised £29,000 and it is STILL coming in. Once again, the wonderful team at the Beach Hut Café welcomed everyone for festive refreshments afterwards too and recently delivered over £9,000 from the event!
We are hoping to add more events to our calendar this year as the pandemic begins to settle a little. However, the virus continues to impact our lives in many ways and our hospice team have been working incredibly hard to maintain their high standard of service and ensure patients, families and carers are kept safe while still experiencing the comfort and support that is so vital to their care. A huge thank you to everyone on the team – you continue to inspire us with your dedication, selflessness and kindness and we are so very proud to support you.
As you are aware, we have been trying to get the building of our new hospice ‘off the ground’ for a long time and sadly, the pandemic has put a (much longer than anticipated) pause on the project. However, we are now able to start the ball rolling again and, fingers crossed, we are hoping that the planning permission we submitted in November 2019 will be approved this summer and we can officially launch our Brick by Brick appeal to make that wonderful new building a reality.
Please keep an eye on our website and social media pages to stay up to date with developments, events, news and plans and we look forward to seeing more of your lovely faces soon. Take care!
Until next time….
Anyone that wishes to make a donation can do so on our website at www.macmillanlocal.org/make-a-donation and if you haven’t already signed up to our newsletter, you can do so at www.macmillanlocal.org/subscribe.
