As a child I was quite unwell and spent a year of my life in Great Ormond Street Hospital – whilst beating cancer. 23 years later, I can still picture hospital rooms, nurses, consultants and remember with particular fondness the countless support staff that made the difficult time bearable and kept a smile on my face.
Today I spent the morning at Evelina Children’s Hospital, with the Starlight Children’s Foundation and Tom Chambers as we gave out Christmas presents on behalf of the Scotch Brand with whom I work closely with as part of the day job at 3M. Tom, very kindly gave his time as an ambassador for the charity – you may remember him from his Holby City days as an actor, or more recently the triumphant winner of Strictly Come Dancing
I’d never heard of this charity before our tie up through work, but my goodness they do such a remarkable job at granting wishes and hospital entertainment to seriously ill, but incredibly brave children. Seeing the smiles on the children’s faces was heart warming, and really puts perspective on life and how much we take good health for granted. Being on that hospital ward this morning brought back memories of my own childhood, and I was proud to be supporting a charity that makes a huge difference.
This Christmas, the Scotch Brand that I work for has donated £10,000 to this lovely charity, as part of our Christmas campaign. Rather than repeat the same TV advert again, we decided to do things a little differently this year and so we recruited a rugby team and set them a gift wrapping challenge. It was a hilarious day of filming back in September, but the gifts that they attempted to wrap – with some success I might add – were the gifts that we donated to the hospital today.
You can watch the video here:
I’m going to continue to support this charity next year on a personal level by running a half marathon to raise much needed funds. 93p of every £1 raised goes to helping sick children – there are not many charities that can make that promise.
thesocialparadigm 