Mind & Southend Hospital Charity
January 2019
As discussed in the previous blog post, each month I have chosen one or two charities to support and to dedicate my running to:
This month I will be running for Mind and Southend Hospital Charity.
I will be partaking in Active January for Mind, the mental health charity and I will be running the Tink 5K and the Race to the Future 10K for Southend Charity Hospital. My everyday training will also be dedicated to the aforementioned charities.
Mind
Fundraising Link
Being at University is an amazing opportunity, however, in my 4 years, I have seen and experienced myself many students with mental health issues. This January, I am, not only helping myself by keeping active every day this month, but I also hope to raise the awareness of mental health with Universities.
After struggling with many mental health issues from a young age, I am very proud to say that 2018 was one of the best years, if not the best year, mentally. I have come on leaps and bounds with my mental health and I strongly believe that keeping active has a large part to play in that. If you do struggle with mental health, please please talk to someone about it and see a medical professional. I promise you, there is light at the end of the tunnel and life gets so much better.
Every year, one in four of us will experience a mental health problem. But hundreds of thousands of people are still struggling. Mind's aim is to help those struggling with their mental health. They provide online support and counselling as well as local help, providing training to workers and teaching people about mental health.
In 2017/18 alone, these are their statistics for how they used the money raised:
- Working with employers, they supported nearly 600,000 people to have better means health at work. Work can be a large factor of stress which can drastically affect mental health.
- Their mental health online information was accessed 12 millions times.
- Mind's local services supported over 425,500 people
In 2019-2021, they hope to achieve the following aims:
- remove inequality
- continue to influence the Government's plans for mental health
- make sure their recommendations to change the Mental Health Act are in the UK government’s final report and reflect their engagement work with black and minority ethnic communities.
- launch at least 10 peer support hubs, providing face-to-face peer support to around 8,000 people
Southend Hospital Charity
Fundraising Link
This January (2019), I will be running the Tink 5K and the Race to the Future 10K in order to raise money for the Southend Hospital Charity. The Southend Hospital Charity is a charity that I hold very close to my heart as the money raised will help to support the hospital and its staff. In 2016, my Grandfather was admitted to Southend Hospital and they cared for him so well in his final days. I would love to fundraise money for SHC so that they can continue the excellent care and support that they provide.
The Southend Hospital Charity's aim is to improve the hospital environment, fund groundbreaking research, support the development and training of hospital staff and provide state-of-the-art equipment.
Here are a few of the things that SHC have done with the money raised in 2017/18:
1) To mark the 20th Anniversary of the Southend Hospital Charitable Foundation, the For Wards Appeal aims to raise £500,000 for 20 transformational projects across 20 different areas of Southend Hospital.
2) The Keyhole Cancer Appeal has raised over £500,000 for the provision of a new state-of-the-art laparoscopic (keyhole surgery) theatre suite at Southend University Hospital which opened in October 2017. The money raised has enabled surgeons to perform the latest and most complex keyhole procedures for patients undergoing cancer and general surgery. At the heart of the new theatre are some of the most advanced camera systems in Europe, which deliver extremely high-quality 3D images.
3) Dementia Appeal. They have raised several pounds for this appeal so far, however, they still have some aims:
- Calendar Clocks so that patients on wards can tell the time easily using clocks that are highly visible and can be orientated to the date.
- Memory Boxes: to assist patients in establishing a landmark in an unfamiliar environment such as a care home or hospital
- Bed sensors and chair sensors to alert nurses when patients want to get up and to reduce the number of falls
- Personal DVD players for relaxation
- Personal MP3 players and over earphones to listen to relaxing music
- Communicators for the hard of hearing – magnifies the sound enabling patients to hear more easily
- Sing along cd’s, classical music cd’s, picture books and DVD’s of relaxing scenes
- ‘Reminiscence pictures’: carefully chosen and themed to provide era-specific, stimulating, nostalgic images on popular themes and create attractive landmarks which stimulate reminiscence, conversation and interaction
- ‘Conversation cards’: 1940’s themed cards are the perfect way to help create a meaningful conversation with elderly people particularly those with dementia, memory loss and confusion.
This is just a small insight into what your money can help with at Southend Hospital.