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Bedfordshire Sands and CHUMS – Your New Chosen Charities

11 September 2019

A big thank you to those members who took the time to vote for which charities we should support over the next twelve months. We are delighted to announce that the charities we will be fundraising for are Bedfordshire Sands and CHUMS.

Back in July our members nominated 15 charities they thought deserved our financial support over the coming year. Then, in August, we asked members to vote which two from those fifteen they would like us to support. CHUMS received the most votes, very closely followed by Bedfordshire Sands; both of these charities do amazing work supporting local people. The Club holds a series of fund-raising events for members and staff throughout the year, with our main event being the popular annual Summer Ball.

CHUMS Mental Health & Emotional Wellbeing Service for Children and Young People provides therapeutic support in a variety of ways in Bedfordshire.  CHUMS has developed a unique service delivery model to ensure that children and young people are able to access a service that supports their individual needs.

Sue Clarke, head of Fundraising and Communications at CHUMS commented: “We are experiencing a very challenging time at the moment as demand for our services is very high, so your support couldn’t have come at a better time.  We have experienced a dramatic rise in suicides in the County this year and that was backed up by an ONS report yesterday saying that suicide rates have jumped to the highest rates since 2002. Thanks so much to your members for their support.”

Bedfordshire Sands is part of Sands, the stillbirth and neonatal death charity. Sands operates throughout the UK, supporting anyone affected by the death of a baby, working to improve the care bereaved parents receive, promoting research and working closely with many different organisations to drive awareness of issues relating to baby loss. Bedfordshire Sands is a volunteer-led group that works to support the charity’s aims in our area.

Fiona Wustrau, Chair of the charity wanted to thank members saying “We are so grateful to Club Towers for supporting the work of Bedfordshire Sands, donations like this mean that we are able to ensure all bereaved parents receive a memory box at the time of their babies birth along with lots of information and support, this is offered online, by phone and at our support meetings by our trained volunteer befrienders and can help parents not to feel so alone through this devastating experience”

Steve Davies our General Manager would like to thank members for taking the time to either nominate or vote. He said “We were really pleased with the number of votes we’ve received this year. The generosity of our members since we opened has been wonderful raising over £17,000 for local charities since we opened in 2017. We look forward to another year of fundraising for two very worthwhile charities.”

The first event in our fundraising calendar will be our cake and coffee morning on the 18th October. As usual the event will take place in the Club Lounge from 9am – 12pm with lots of delicious cakes and 50% of all hot drink sales will also be donated by the Club to the charities. If you are able to help bake anything, please do let us know by emailing [email protected] .

We also welcome suggestions for any future events you would like to see at the Club, please do get in touch via [email protected] with any thoughts.

 

Further information on the charities can be found on their websites www.chums.uk.com and https://bedfordshire.sands.org.uk/

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