Darlington Building Society backs St Teresa's Hospice's service expansion

Howard Lake | 29 June 2007 | Newswire

Approved by and distributed on behalf of St Teresa’s Hospice
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CONTACT: Claire Buchan (01325) 363436
DARLINGTON BUILDING SOCIETY BACKS ST TERESA’S HOSPICE’S SERVICE EXPANSION
29/06/07
Darlington Building Society is giving its backing to St Teresa’s Hospice’s new fundraising campaign, helping to finance a £1 million service expansion that will benefit an estimated 2,250 more people every year.
St Teresa’s Hospice’s ‘Half A Million Hugs’ campaign, which officially launched in April, has been designed exclusively to raise funds for the charity’s new Counselling and Complementary Therapies Centre, which is soon to be built adjacent to the existing Hospice property at Woodland Road.
The new centre, which is expected to open in 2008, will allow the charity to increase its range of counselling and complementary therapy services, including the introduction of a brand new service called Butterflies, designed to support children and young people who have been bereaved.
Darlington Building Society, which currently supports a wide range of local charities and community projects, has pledged its support to the Half a Million Hugs fundraising campaign, sponsoring 10,000 home collection boxes which individual members of the community to collect their local change for donation to the appeal.
The boxes, which will be available for collection from the Sentinel House (Darlington), Tubwell Row (Darlington), Cockerton, Northallerton and Barnard Castle branches of Darlington Building Society from July 2, 2007, can then be returned to any of the Building Society’s branches for the contents to be deposited free of charge directly into the Half a Million Hugs account.
St Teresa’s Hospice Director, Jane Bradshaw, said: The new Centre for Counselling and Complementary Therapies will make an enormous difference to St Teresa’s Hospice, not only for the many individuals and their families who already use our services, but also to those who may need our help in the future.
The hospice currently costs around £1.3 million per year to run. Obviously we must continue to meet these costs, but we will need an extra effort for the additional money required to complete the building and our planned developments. Thanks to the generous grant from central Government we are half way there, but we still have to raise around £500,000 in order to achieve our vision so that we can help more patients, their children and carers at their most difficult and distressing time.
I would like to thank everyone at Darlington Building Society for offering their support and in particular for agreeing to give their time free of charge to facilitate donations.”
Peter Rowley, chief executive, Darlington Building Society, said: Darlington Building Society has been a major supporter of St Teresa’s Hospice for many years and we are always looking for new and effective ways of raising funds to help them in the valuable work they do in the region. The Hospice’s new Counselling and Complementary Therapies Centre will undoubtedly make a huge difference to the Darlington community and I hope that by pledging our support and making it easier for people to make a donation, we will be able to help the Hospice to achieve its £500,000 campaign target.
ENDS

About Howard Lake
Howard Lake is consultant editor of UK Fundraising. He founded the site in 1994 and successfully sold it in 2022. As director of Giving X Ltd he is exploring growing giving on a massive scale. He is the founder of Fundraising Camp and co-founder of GoodJobs.