Category Archives: charity

I Lied- One Last Gift Guide

18th December 2013
In search of a few last minute Christmas gifts, I recently came across the Leukaemia & Lymphoma Research Christmas online shop and wanted to share my findings. I was pleasantly surprised to find so many cute gifts for under a tenner. The products are all really tasteful and have a vintage feel about them. The website is particularly good if you are struggling with gift ideas for any friends or family that love baking and gardening. The best part is that buying something from their shop helps the charity continue their fight to beat blood cancer, which is a cause I can certainly get behind. Here are some of my favourite charity gifts:




I love hot chocolate and have a sweet tooth, so this Devilishly Different Drinking Fudge kit had me at hello! The idea of melting all of these amazing flavours with marshmallows is just heaven. A present for myself I think at £14.95.



I have a friend who loves making cupcakes so this Christmas Cupcake Kit is perfect for her and under a tenner at £9.95. Even better, I might get to eat them when she is done. They have a whole range of items in a similar design so you could also add a cute apron or matching tea towels if you wanted to make it a bigger gift.



You could also pair the cupcake kit with this cute Vintage Tea Party picture and recipe book. So many of my friends love anything vintage and we all like to eat tea and cake right? So, this one is bound to please your friends at just £9.95. 



Unfortunately you can’t eat these but they will make you smell yummy! This Luxury Bath Melt Collection is made by an environmentally friendly company. This coupled with the fact that you are giving to charity makes this the most angelic gift going. This should get you some brownie points with your Mum or Grandma. That and what lady doesn’t love a good bath? Only £13.95.



This one is sure to be a winner for Uncles, Dads and Granddads everywhere. Whisky and cake combined, what more can they ask for? This Whisky Cake is a bargain at just £13.95.

There are so many more quality gifts available. 100% of the profits go towards beating blood cancer and their lifesaving blood cancer research, so please do take a look and support a good cause while you’re shopping for Christmas. 
I would also be interested to hear about any of your favourite gift choices for Christmas, so please feel free to post your comments.
xxx

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Show your Festive Selfie for Charity with Westfield

11th December 2013
So, Friday December 13th is Christmas Jumper Day and I was in charge of arranging a day of festive knits at work,
since I’m not going to be in work now I’m jumping on another way to raise some funds.
Westfield London are calling out for bloggers to pull on their favourite Christmas Jumper, strike a pose for a selfie and get sharing.

For every blogger who writes a post about the campaign including a snapshot of themselves in their favourite Christmas jumper, Westfield will donate £10 to Save the Children. We’re asking that everyone tweet their post before the 13th of December to @westfieldlondon including #Selfies4STC so we know to make a donation on their behalf! Some of the best selfies will be shared on the Westfield site as well.


I paid a huge amount of money (well, huge for me) for this Topshop knit a couple of years ago but it’s earnt is keep as I bring it out every December. 
I’ll be tweeting my post in time to raise some funds for a vital cause and I’d love as many of you lovely folks to do the same too.
It doesn’t take long and it’s a bit of fun too!

Are you doing anything else for Christmas Jumper Day? 
Send me links to your posts if you do get on board with this campaign!

For more information about this campaign and for more fundraising events check out the Westfield London website here.
xxx

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The Innocent Big Knit

21st November 2013
I think by now everyone has seen those cute little bottles of Innocent Smoothies on the shelves sporting their cute little knitted hats. This started way back in 2003 and what I’m sharing today is what exactly do those little hats mean?
Innocent work alongside Age UK and the money raised from the sale of the smoothies has helped fund a whole host of winter initiatives both locally and nationally to help support vulnerable elderly people and give them some support and advice, as well as company to get them through the long winter months.
So far Innocent have raised a whopping £1.5 million and 5 million mini hats have been knitted.
How the big knit works.

This year alone over 1 million hats have been knitted from people of all ages and there have been some fantastic designs- a reindeer, a giant squid and a policeman to name just a few.
How exciting would it be to see your design on the shelf?

The knitting phase for this year is over but the smoothies are on sale in all large supermarkets as well as Boots and Costa Coffee- and you might find them pop up in a few other places too.

For every smoothie sold 25p goes to Age UK,
you can also create a virtual hat  where 10p for every hat created and shared will go to the Age UK.

You can text to donate £3 (100% goes to the charity, network charges will apply) by texting “KNIT” to 70004

To find out more visit

 

Have you ever knitted a hat? How will you be supporting the Big Knit this year? It’s a cause close to my heart as I work with a lot of vulnerable elderly folk as part of my job. I’m buying smoothies, creating a virtual hat, I’m in the process of sending a text and I am determined to learn to knit so I can send in my design next year!

xxx

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Stylish Support

23rd October 2013

Right back as far as I can remember my family, and therefore myself have been big supporters of The British Legion’s Poppy Appeal. I can’t remember a year where I haven’t purchased a Poppy so when long time jewellery favourite got in touch to tell me about them teaming up with The British Legion I was only too happy to feature them here.
They’ve created this gorgeous and more than a little bit bling Poppy ring to help The British Legion boost their donations from the traditional paper Poppy. The ring costs £12 of which £3.60 will go to the charity. The Royal British Legion is the UK’s leading charity that supports serving and ex-service personnel in the British Armed Forces. They also provide care and support for the partners and families of those who serve. I think we all know of someone who’s life has been affected by the Armed Forces- be it 100 years ago or just a few days ago and this is a charity I will always have a special place in my heart for.
You can buy your ring online here and do your bit for charity whilst keeping stylish.
I’ll be sporting this ring alongside my paper Poppy this year and for infinite years to come. 
xxx

Posted in charity, jon richard

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Show some Support- HIPZ

09th April 2013
As most of you know, I work in a Doctor’s surgery in my home town. Many of the GPs there are involved in other projects as well as general practice and today I’d like to share with you the work one of our docs, Jon Rees does for the charity HIPZ
HIPZ (Health Improvements Project Zanzibar) is a UK registered charity and was established in
2006 by Dr Ru MacDonagh, a consultant surgeon based in the UK. Having worked for many years
in Zanzibar and Tanzania, Ru had developed strong links in Zanzibar with both the Health Sector
and the Government. In particular he has a longstanding professional relationship with Consultant
Surgeon, and now Principal Secretary to the Minister of Health, Dr Mohamed Jiddawi. It was
an approach from Dr Jiddawi to Ru for assistance in 2006 that lead to the creation of HIPZ. The
other trustees (eight in total) are mainly doctors who have considerable experience of working in
Africa, some qualified in tropical medicine, along with trustees with relevant financial, legal and
administrative expertise.
Dr Rees
The main point of this post is to spread the word about a bike ride that Dr Rees is doing in June to raise some much needed funds for HIPZ. I’ll leave most of the wording of this post to the man himself as he can say it far better than I can (blogger in the making?)
In June I will be part of a group representing HIPZ, cycling round the island of Zanzibar to raise money for our small charity.
I cycled around the island in 2010 and as a group we raised over £80,000 for HIPZ. This has been used over the last 3 years to continue our work in collaboration with the Zanzibar govt (public private partnership) and has been instrumental in allowing us to set up a comprehensive maternity service (including ambulance collection from the villages, and a Caesarean section service) – this has transformed maternity care in the Makunduchi region – there were no maternal deaths at Makunduchi in 2011 as a result. We have also got surgical services running, allowing simple operations such as hernia repairs, appendicectomies etc to be carried out. We have a primary health care unit running seeing over 2000 patients a month. This is all taking place in a hospital that was severely dysfunctional when HIPZ took it over.
As a result of the success at Makunduchi hospital, the Zanzibar government asked HIPZ to take over the running of Kivunge hospital in the north of Zanzibar which serves 180000 people – we now have responsibility for the health care of over 250,000 people. Kivunge has enormous problems and we again hope to develop basic maternity, paediatric, primary care and surgical services as a priority. But we need some funds to do this.
We are being joined on the bike ride by Peter Andre! Pete is now a good friend of Ru MacDonagh who founded HIPZ and Ru’s daughter Emily is Pete’s girlfriend! Pete was operated on by Ru a few years ago and has subsequently become a supporter of HIPZ, travelling out to Zanzibar last year to see our work for himself, with ITV4 film crew in tow! We will be accompanied by ITV4 film crew who will be filming for ‘Peter Andre: My Life’…
HIPZ has had huge support from local Rotary clubs – Nailsea and Backwell have been fantastic supporters and have funded the purchase of specialised anaesthetic machines for both hospitals which have been fundamental in providing maternity and surgical services. Portishead Rotary have also made a number of contributions to this project.
I am hoping to raise over £3000 for the project – I am paying all my own costs so all money raised goes direct to providing health care on Zanzibar.
 
Dr Rees with Fatawi, the nurse anaesthetist with the Glostavent anaesthetic machine bought by Nailsea / Backwell Rotary club

Decorating to make a Children’s ward a little bit brighter

Children’s ward- quite the contrast to the wards we experience here
 
If you’d like to show some support for this amazing work (and I’m kind of begging  you nicely to do so) then you can donate and sponsor Dr Rees and his bike ride by clicking on the Just Giving link
Anything you can spare would make such a difference.
For more information about HIPZ visit HIPZ website – www.hipz.org.uk or follow them on Twitter @HIPZ_UK
This isn’t the last post you see on this. It’s a cause I support fully and I have some fund raising ideas waiting to be put in to action. 
 I’ll keep you updated on the bike ride too, donate enough and I might be able to beg some Peter Andre pics! 
xxx

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