Charities We Support
Butterwick Hospices
We have given a lot of fund-raising support to both the adult Butterwick Hospice and also the Children`s Hospice over the years. A couple of years ago, we trained Butterwick staff members in a Strictly Come Dancing kind of a way so that they could compete against other newly trained dancers in a grand dance-off. One of our trainees was the overall winner. Most recently, we sent STARE to perform at a fund-raising dinner at Hallgath Hotel in Darlington and received the following letter of thanks:-
Hi Trudy
Just a quick thank you to say how lovely it was that Janie brought the young ladies and gentlemen of Stagecoach to perform for us at the above event. The feedback I’ve had is that they looked, danced and sang beautifully, were very professional and hugely entertaining… just some of the comments.
From my point of view, it gave the evening real perzaz (excuse the spelling) and a real up-beat message that without schools such as Stagecoach to broaden children and young people’s minds and their physical expression, the world would be a very sad place.
Our huge gratitude for all the hard work Janie and the girls and boys put it, the dancing and singing were excellent and a really great start to the evening.
Please pass on our thanks to all the youngsters who took part and I’m sorry I missed Janie at the end.
Thanks again.
Same time next year !!
Steph J
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Hands of Love
http://www.handsoflove.org.uk/
The parents of one of our Yarm students run this charity which supports an orphanage in one of the poorest parts of Uganda. They look for normal fund-raising and also sponsorship for the 300+ children who live in the orphanage. At the moment only a fraction of the total are sponsored and these are the only children who are guaranteed to eat every day. The facilities are very basic and when it rains the children often have to sleep outside for fear of the buildings collapsing. All the ravages of AIDS and other illnesses add to their struggle to survive. A local engineering firm has paid for a container load of supplies to be shipped out to the community. We sent stickers and pens and stationery items for the teachers to use, and badges, balloons and carrier bags so that the children could have a few personal possessions.
Dedicated sponsors cover all the administration costs of this charity so that every penny you send goes straight where it is needed. Our biggest fundraiser for the orphanage was our Guinness Record attempt on the largest Locomotion Dance. Below is a letter received this week (Oct 2008) from the charity.
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Also recently we had this update from the orphanage:-
At Hands of love Orphanage and school,
Namadhi Mayuge District:
Our 4 class room block has had some lift up. We received and used £1,000 from Pastor Janat and her Church/Ministry in NJ,USA.
We are waiting on money fundraised by Helen Moon and Jo to lift it to the wall plate, and roofing shall be done. Then we shall be completing it as we use it for some purposes.
Alex Sendi- our Finance Administrator is working on the photos.
Our Healthy centre started off very well in August. A lot of nasty diseases are being worked on by the Nurse. We, however, need a lot of drugs and we are missing many basic facilities in the healthy centre.
The number of UK sponsored children is growing bigger every month. We appreciate you so much
JACKSON - our security guard is excellent.
We have recruited many new staff members.
The Government demands that we recruit a trained qualified teacher to Head the Hands of love school (instead of Sylvia Kyabita who has been acting headmistress since Mid 2006) to ensure that Academic standard of all the children is up to date. This is one of very big challenges we have in our administration presently. The challenges in this are 4:
- The General inspector of schools wants it to be done immediately (his deadline was May 2008!)
- The highly qualified Headmistress/Headmaster will need minimum payment of £100 because the government pays at least £ 150 in abetter working environment.
- Getting a worker and taking him/her to Namadhi- Mayuge District is one of the very difficult things.
-Special General meal for September: Shall be served on Tuesday 30th, 2008.
The Games and Sports ground: We got good news that Faith and Football is to sponsor us develop the land they bought for us. We are so grateful for this offer. Not wanting to give insufficient information, we have technical people helping us to gather information on this and we shall send it as soon as possible.
The Sample Christmas cards from Hands of love children to Falk Nutec have been posted by Hope our very faithful secretary.
Hands of Love HIV/AIDS combat program:
Based at KICC in Kampala- Uganda, we are established in 4 districts of Uganda. In the Rural Mayuge district; at Hands of love Orphanage&school, In the rural Kamuli district: at Namwendwa International Christian Centre, In the per-Urban Kayunga District: at Kayunga International Christian centre, In Kampala- Wakiso District at KICC Kyanja.
We have 100 volunteers.
Training for volunteers is on in October 2008.- Oliver Babirye (Ruth’s youngest sister completing Studies) is the Director of our Hands of love HIV/AIDS combat program.
We need organisations to partner with us in this fight against the AIDS pandemic.
The awaited container:
This we wait with a lot of excitement. We request for the list of the things on board to enable us present it to the people who are willing to process it to us on a fee.
Thank you very much all of you friends for your patience with us, your commitment on this great work of being Hands of love to the children of Uganda-Africa and the needy adults.
Special thanks to you all our Partners and sponsors. We Value you so much.
Your friend & His servant,
ELIJAH E.L. SEBUCHU.
You can make special gifts to the orphanage as outlined in the forms below
We
December 2008
We had a total very close to £300 collected from our end of show collections in aid of The Hands of Love Orphanage. I am glad to say that this amount is enough to make sure that ALL the orphans have a meal. So well done - all of you. I also received a cheque for £75 for the orphanage from the Eston Residents Association in payment for the performance given by STARE at their Christmas Festival early in December
For the most recent news from Hands of Love - the container has arrived - click below
Interact
http://www.interactnetwork.org.uk/html/home.php?back=1
Interact is Stagecoach`s own charity which supports its work with socially, physically and mentally disadvantaged young people. There are established regular Interact classes in a few places around Britain but nowadays the charity is putting more of its resources into rolling out temporary workshops fairly around Britain so that more people can access its value
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NSPCC
This is the piece I put to the web site last year (2007) when we were preparing for our 10th Anniversary show at the Oakwood Centre.
I have been a supporter of the NSPCC ever since I was a little girl and I used to save my pocket money for them in my “blue egg box” – Remember them? It seems such a good charity for Stagecoach to support. We are trying to improve the confidence and life chances of our students and, in a more extreme way, so are the NSPCC. We share the same ethics of keeping children safe, protected and valued.
If your child will not be at the Anniversary show but you would like to contribute to the sums raised for the NSPCC by this event, then follow the link below to the NSPCC`s web site and make a contribution there. Could you quote this code when making your donation “612406”
Thank you,
Trudy.
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St Teresa’s Hospice
http://www.darlingtonhospice.org.uk/
We have not been involved with Darlington`s Hospice very much but would be happy to help again. We did send students to perform at the Civic in their fund-raising show described in their letter to us below.
THE HEART FOUNDATION
Raised by STARE Carol singers at a private function in Durham (Christmas 2009)
CANCER RESEARCH UK
Following on from Sue Bunnett`s battle with Breast Cancer, last year we had a Grand Christmas Concert to raise funds for Cancer Research UK. In total we raised £2250. Here is a receipt from The Eston Residents` Association who donated £50 towards this target and a letter from Cancer Research thanking us for the total donation
