February 12th 2006 saw the beginning of Children’s Heart Week. The www.childrens-heart-fed.org.uk and its member groups, including the Children’s Heart Association organised a week of exciting events to raise awareness and funds to support the needs of heart children and their families.
You can read more in our feature here.
Thank you to Kevin and Barry Wilkinson who have again been raising funds and awareness for the Association. In December 2005 they took part in the Grim Challenge, a gruelling 8 mile off-road challenge. You can visit their website atwww.stacey-louise.co.uk.
Photos by ProSportPhotos
Together with buy.at we have launched a webshop. You can choose from over 80 retailers and by purchasing through our webshop the Association receives commission on the purchase.
You pay exactly the same price as if you’d gone directly – so there’s no excuse!
In the shop you will find many retailers you know including Comet, BT, M&S and John Lewis. Thinking about getting Sky TV? If you sign up via our webshop, you will be helping the Association. Have a look through the A-Z to see all the available retailers.
Keen to buy? Visit www.heartchild.info/shop.
We were saddened to hear about the loss of Stacey-Louise who died due to congenital heart disease on 15th August 2005. Friends and family of Stacey-Louise decided to take part in the Great North Run to raise money for LGI, where she was treated, and for our Association through Justgiving. Over £400 pounds was raised, for which we are extremely grateful.
The finish times were: Barry – 2hrs 36m 27s; Kevin – 2hrs 29m 18s; Martin – 3hrs 21m 30s (injury at 6 mile marker).
You can read more about the day in this feature.
The Association has teamed up with JustGiving.com. For more information see JustGiving and the Association.
Thank you to Jill Butterworth. Jill is running in this year’s Flora London Marathon and has nominated our Association as her charity. If you would like to sponsor Jill then please visit her sponsorship page athttp://www.justgiving.com/closetomyheart.
A collection organised by the Alder Hey branch on the streets of Ormskirk raised £150. Two collections in Liverpool in December raised over £1300 and another collection is planned for Saturday 12th February.
The final count from the 2004 Beerwalk is in. We raised £1064. If you’d like to take part on behalf of the Association in the 2005 Beerwalk, please get in touch.
For one week in November, members of the Alder Hey branch ran a charity shop to raise funds for the Association.
Work started months before by advertising and collecting the donated items. The day arrived to prepare the shop in preparation for what we hoped to be a successful week. On Saturday we had a huge transit van fully loaded plus eight full car loads of saleable items. (We were amazed at the generosity of people). It took a team of 12 friends over five hours to unpack and display the goods.
On arrival at the shop on Monday morning (our first day) we were greeted by a queue of eager customers for the first of many bargains to be had. Even while opening the shop doors to get the volunteers in we were asked about prices for items which people could see on display. First to be sold was a rug. The shop is normally open 10-4 but due to demand we had to open 9-5! On Monday we had to close the doors twice due to the overwhelming number of customers who had turned up to see what bargains we had.
We had set a target of £1000 but we exceeded our expectations. In the first two days alone we took nearly £800 and although the remaining days weren’t as good we were more than pleased.
We had a lot of laughs on the way and met lots of lovely people. Our thanks go to everyone who donated and bought from our shop.
Val
A big thank you to all who supported our Corporate Christmas Card scheme in 2004. We raised £159. Happy New Year and, again, thank you.