We wanted to make sure St Catherine’s feel supported when they move into their new home.
New Hospice News News and Blog
If we are to reach everyone who could benefit from our care now and in the future, we need more space. That’s why we’re building a brand new hospice that will not only increase the amount of beds we can offer to those facing the end of their life, but also expand our community, counselling and therapies teams, as well as our day services.
All of this will only be possible with the support of our local community. Here, Luke and Steph Guidera tells us how they’re supporting our new hospice appeal:
“We moved to Pease Pottage at the end of 2017 and absolutely love it here. When we heard that our local hospice, St Catherine’s, were planning to build their brand new hospice nearby we were really excited and knew straight away that we wanted to do something to help.
We know people who have had family cared for by St Catherine’s and we think it’s incredible what they do. They have a lot of support from the local community and we wanted to make sure that they feel supported over here in Pease Pottage when they move into their new home. Luke was sat in our local pub, The Black Swan, one night and thought that it would be a great place to hold an event so we decided to organise a Charity Fun Day to raise money to help St Catherine’s fund their new hospice building.
Following a really successful event in 2018, we organised our second Charity Fun Day on 25th August this year. Last year we planned the event in four weeks, so to have 10 months to plan it this time was amazing!
We wanted the event to be fun and family-friendly, with something for everyone to enjoy. We also wanted to make sure that it had a personal feel to it and we were so lucky to have the support of so many local people and businesses to help us to do this including: The Friary, Aim Scaffolding, BS Transport and Sussex Police.
We had live music all day and the acts all very kindly donated their time for free. The crowd absolutely loved the performances from Meg Lawrenceson, Swing N King, Doomsville and Mike Dobie! Later in the day, visitors showed off their own musical talents at karaoke, and we were even given a £60 donation for one person to sing a particular song, which helped us to raise even more vital funds for the hospice!
Alongside this we also had stalls, a bouncy castle and face painting for visitors to enjoy, and Steph baked 150 tasty cupcakes to sell on the day!
Staff at The Black Swan were absolutely amazing too. 15 of them helped us by working on the day and they kindly donated all their tips from the event to St Catherine’s, as well as all the profit from the hot food that they provided. They even donated a voucher and 10 real ale sets to the raffle. We were so grateful for their amazing support.
We had a brilliant day with over 250 people turning up to support us and St Catherine’s, including lots of our neighbours in Pease Pottage. We’ve arranged for The Black Swan to host monthly karaoke nights for the next year to raise the funds to help us organise an even bigger and better Charity Fun Day in 2020!
As well as being great fun, the event also gave us the opportunity to tell people more about St Catherine’s and to date we have raised £2,605.53 for their new hospice appeal so that they can continue doing their incredible work in our local community.”
If, like Luke and Steph, you would like to support our new hospice appeal, you can find out more information here, call our Capital Appeal Team on 01293 447362 or email newbuild@stch.org.uk.
