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