A busy time of year, isn't it?! What with decorating the home in seasonal cheeriness, buying gifts and preparing for family get-togethers, you can feel a bit 'spent' when it comes to giving and even more so if it's your time that's needed. And so... a couple of tales to cheer any flagging spirits...
Willow Burn Hospice paid tribute at our volunteer lunch recently to staff volunteers from the Business School who gave up a day of their time to sort, price and put tickets on goods that had been donated to the Hospice (clothes, books and toys) for two fundraising fayres that the Hospice had organised. Willow Burn Hospice is a small unit in Maiden Law, Lanchester which, for the last 23 years, has been supporting patients and their families who are suffering from life limiting illness. They offer an in-patient unit and have a number of outpatient and community services available including day hospice, symptom management clinics, holistic therapies and family bereavement counselling and support.
Staff from the Business School spent a day in not-so-luxurious surroundings at the Hospice warehouse packing tombola prizes and cataloguing event equipment. But seemingly small gifts of time can have a huge impact; because the goods had been cleaned, marked up and sorted properly the Hospice found that the takings at both fayres were up by over 50% on previous years. As well as completing a task that would have taken workers from the Hospice over a week to get through, the fayres brought in a contribution of £11,500 towards the running costs of the Hospice...which in real terms paid for a week's services for terminally ill clients. Buying more quality time for these clients is perhaps the greatest gift the staff could possibly have given. A huge thank you to the Business School teams for their hard work, enthusiasm and, most of all, their sense of fun!
Staff from the Business School spent a day in not-so-luxurious surroundings at the Hospice warehouse packing tombola prizes and cataloguing event equipment. But seemingly small gifts of time can have a huge impact; because the goods had been cleaned, marked up and sorted properly the Hospice found that the takings at both fayres were up by over 50% on previous years. As well as completing a task that would have taken workers from the Hospice over a week to get through, the fayres brought in a contribution of £11,500 towards the running costs of the Hospice...which in real terms paid for a week's services for terminally ill clients. Buying more quality time for these clients is perhaps the greatest gift the staff could possibly have given. A huge thank you to the Business School teams for their hard work, enthusiasm and, most of all, their sense of fun!
Staff volunteers aross the board have been extremely busy and have clocked up an extraordinary number of hours taking part in events, activities and local good causes. Avril Brown, leading a team of volunteers from Queen's Campus, adopted the Cyrenians as their favoured charity after working on a garden allotment for the charity as part of a team challenge in the summer. The team just thought it would be a nice idea to get some gifts for the client residents - formerly homeless young men living in hostel accommodation or in supported tenancies. The worker at the Cyrenians mentioned that a lot of the clients have children and explained how difficult it was for them to get funds together to buy gifts and how they worried about spending time with them. Back at Queen’s Campus, Avril sent out a call-to-arms and an email went out to all Admin Network members to pass on to their colleagues asking for donations of gifts and clothes for the men and for their children.
Staff from all different departments and disciplines at Queen's Campus were extremely generous donating gifts of scarfs, aftershave clothes and games for the men and all sorts of toys for their children. Another email went out asking for more for cash donations to buy gifts and a couple of the volunteer team members targeted local stores – Tesco, Asda, Sainsburys etc. to see if they could encourage them to contribute. Avril organised a team to wrap and stick bows on the gifts, labelling the children’s gifts with contents/ages etc.The team managed to collect nearly 100 gifts for the guys at the Cyrenians and delivered them along with a Christmas tree to the Cyrenians' hostel at Plawsworth. Tesco also very kindly donated £60 worth of gifts too – so hopefully Christmas will be a bit more special for them all this year. The Cyrenians' staff and client residents were absolutely delighted with the gifts; they can now experience the pleasure of spending time with their children and watching them open gifts – something a lot of them did not think was possible this year. Thank you Avril and your wonderful team!
If you'd like to get in touch next year about getting involved in your local community, drop us a line at community.engagement@durham.ac.uk or give us a call on 0191 334 2199.
A Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year from the team from Staff Volunteering and Outreach.
If you'd like to get in touch next year about getting involved in your local community, drop us a line at community.engagement@durham.ac.uk or give us a call on 0191 334 2199.
A Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year from the team from Staff Volunteering and Outreach.
