WE DID it!
A Daily Echo campaign to raise £160,000 for a new children’s A&E unit at Southampton General Hospital has reached its goal.
Companies and organisations from across Hampshire donated thousands of pounds towards the #MatchMyMoney appeal, which saw the first £40,000 match funded by the Barker Mill Foundation.
That money will now go into the pot to be matched again by central government after former chancellor George Osborne promised to match the first £1 million raised.
The project is set to be the first phase in a new children’s hospital for the south, which when opened in 2018 will see 30,000 youngsters from nine counties treated in the new state of the art department with child-friendly waiting and treatment rooms away from the main hospital building.
The money from #MatchMyMoney will go towards celebrity couple Sarah Parish and James Murray’s #2MillionSteps fundraising initiative, which aims to raise the cash needed for the new facility.
Tim Jobling, trustee at Barker-Mill Estates, said: “We are thrilled to have reached our £40,000 target for the Murray Parish Trust’s 2Million Steps campaign.
“We will be match-funding this amount as promised and hope that this goes some way in helping them reach their goal of raising £2m in two years - contributing to the new children’s emergency and trauma department at the University Hospital Southampton that is planned.”
“2Million steps is a great campaign for an important cause, and we thank all those who have donated and helped us reach our target.
“We look forward to seeing the Murray Parish Trust take important steps in making their campaign goals a reality.”
Daily Echo editor Gordon Sutter added: “We would like to say thank you to all the companies and organisations who donated. We couldn’t have done it without them.”
The donors were:
Alresford Rotary
Southampton RFC
Emma Harding
Keygrove
Alresford Community Choir
Brook House Lodge
Itchen Cork Lodge
Gleeds Cost Management
Eastleigh Scouts
Jeremy France Jewellers
Capital Finance Solutions Ltd
HJS Solutions
Winchester Portrait Exhibition
The Grange Festival
HairXtensions
Blaze Construction
Remarkable PR
Quantuma LLP
Chilcomb Wealth
Paultons Park
Steve & Emma Holford
Jules Mountain
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