ABF The Soldiers’ Charity launch year-long Fisher House sponsorship
Photo credited to Simon Hadley for ABF The Soldiers' Charity. L-R: Laura Power, QEHB Charity; Vikki Muirs, ABF The Soldiers' Charity; Col. Ali Brown, ABF The Soldiers' Charity
On Wednesday 1 June, representatives from ABF The Soldiers’ Charity officially launched their £10,000 sponsorship of a room in Fisher House. The House is QEHB Charity’s ‘home away from home’ for families of military patients to stay at whilst their loved ones receive treatment at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital Birmingham, which is also home to the Royal Centre for Defence Medicine.
The Soldiers’ Charity will donate £10,000 to Fisher House to sponsor one of the building’s 18 bedrooms for a year, and have decided to name the room they are sponsoring ‘Wellington’. To celebrate their substantial donation, representatives from the charity travelled to Fisher House, which stands on the site of the Queen Elizabeth Hospital Birmingham. Vikki Muir, Grants and Welfare Executive Officer for The Soldiers' Charity, was joined by retired Colonel Ali Brown, who is a member of the charity’s grants committee. They were led on a tour of Fisher House by Laura Power, a Senior Fundraiser at QEHB Charity, before officially announcing the Wellington room ‘open’.
The Soldiers’ Charity is a national organisation that supports serving and former soldiers in the British Army throughout their lives, whenever they are in need. Brigadier (Ret’d) Robin Bacon, Chief of Staff ABF The Soldiers’ Charity said: “We support a wide range of specialist charities that sustain the British Army ‘family’, both at home and around the world. We take pride in being responsive, making a difference at a critical point in peoples’ lives. We have been doing this since 1944, working with veterans of every conflict, and we envisage continuing doing so for the ‘long haul’ – supporting all future generations of our soldiers and their dependents.”
Laura said: “The Soldiers’ Charity’s support of Fisher House means so much, both to the charity and to the House’s occupants, which include people still actively serving in the British Army, veterans, and the families of injured and ill military personnel. Generous donations like this one enable us to keep on providing that safe haven for families going through an incredibly stressful ordeal, away from the clinical environment but still within walking distance of the hospital where their loved ones are receiving treatment.”
More than 2,000 people have stayed at Fisher House since it opened in 2013, totalling the equivalent of 11,000 nights of accommodation and saving its beneficiaries an estimated £1,000,000. To read more please go to fisherhouseuk.org
