FUNDRAISING FOR A CURE
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PLANETS New Year statement 2017
2016 has been an incredible year, we have raised approximately £175,000 and funded a range of projects; most notably IORT (intra operative radiotherapy), our goal for the last three years, which has finally come to fruition and is now fully operational at Southampton General Hospital with patients being treated this week. This project, which we first thought of in 2013 has been dogged by complications, delays, price rises and administrative red tape. However we have battled on through all of these and the IORT team and PLANETS working together have finally got this project live. We will now provide the funding to keep this active through until the start of 2019 by which time hopefully we will have got NHS funding completely sorted for this.
We have to say a huge thank you to all of our fundraisers and sponsors both large and small who have contributed to this incredible total for the last year. This has been our highest grossing year and we have seen our largest ever events; most notably the LP24 cycle ride and the Bollywood ball. However as with any year we find that the large events raise around half of our annual total and the rest comes from all of our many fantastic supporters who give us individual donations, get sponsored for challenges or put on events from coffee mornings, cake stalls, car boot sales, Church Hall events to fine dining and charity auctions. We are so grateful for every donation whether it be £1 or £10,000. The organisation and personal commitment that goes into each of these is immense and our appreciation is unbounded.
In particular we would like to thank the following people: Brian Stedman for organising the LP24 cycle ride, a mammoth personal commitment that took every spare minute for nine months. Jo Green, Tim Underwood, Sam Newborough and all of the LP 24 cyclists who put their lives on hold for six months and then their bodies on the line for 24 hours in aid of this incredible £65,000 event. Lisa Marouzet, Ian Wilson, Luisa Hashtroudi, Andy Stephen, Becky Pearce and everybody in the support crew who went with LP24 making dinners, mending punctures, setting up drink and feed stations and providing the final champagne reception.
Amanda Mollison, Sam Newborough, Ruth Willrich, Kiran Rai, Vicki Haylock and everybody else who helped organise and set up the Bollywood ball extravaganza in November, not to mention the extremely generous people who donated auction prizes, in particular Simon Hughes and Steph Shepherd. This was attended by 270 people and raised another £21,000 for the charity.
Carole Renvoize and Elizabeth Gay for their efforts at the Braishfield All Saints Church Christmas tree appeal. Leanne Baldry and her incredible ‘Pompey Massive’ fundraising team who have joined us in 2016 and have a whole spreadsheet of fundraising events planned for 2017, Football for Cancer for their generous donation, Ronny Allan for his amazing ongoing ‘tweeting’ on behalf of PLANETS, Tori Caine for her ongoing support of the charity and the wonderful extreme events that she organises every year for us, Venice Beach and Marion Fisher for another year of cake stalls and coffee mornings, Roz Dartmouth for the wonderful charity dinner she arranges annually, Kate Geraghty for a fabulous luncheon in March….
These are just a few of the many hundreds (if not thousands) of people who have supported us and who have sacrificed their own time and put in so much effort over the last year and whom we would like to thank again, from the bottom of our hearts, for all that each and every one of you have done to help us provide the best that we can to support the medical teams in their vital efforts to save lives. We are sorry that we cannot list you all, without making this look like a telephone directory! But we really appreciate everything that you have done.
But above all we would like to thank each and everyone of you for your ongoing support whether this is battling it out on the front line of the hard-core charity cycling events or quiet support from the sidelines, we need it all and really appreciate everything that you can give.
So what next for 2017? Well, we already have a range of challenges and plans including:
1) A one-day charity cycling, running, horse-riding… marathon . This will be held locally in the summer and will end at a camp site with a camp fire, barrels of beer and entertainment. Watch this space for more details!
2) “Scrap to the Future” a two day banger rally in October, Taking sponsored cars with a road value of less than £400 from Southampton to Loch Lomond where they will be scrapped after a black tie dinner.
3) Portsmouth Valentines ball in February organised by ‘The Pompey Massive’
4) Carnival and Casino night. A Caribbean carnival themed casino night at the Hilton in November.
Could you add to this list?! We would love to hear from you! Sign up to our mailing list and like our Facebook page to make sure you are updated on what we have planned.
Our target for 2017 is to raise another £250,000. A big ask but we have a wish list of things that we would like to fund, some of which are listed below;
We would like to support Jo Todd with funding for her next pancreatic and NET cancer research project. We are also keen to part fund a band 6 specialist NET nurse to cover Portsmouth and also Southampton patients with Emma Ramsey.
Alongside the patient support groups that we already fund, and would like to continue doing so, we are looking to initiate counselling sessions for new patients and their families which would be offered on a case by case basis.
In 2017 we are aiming to bring HIPEC (hot intra peritoneal chemotherapy) to UHS. We also need to raise £100,000 to pay for the lease for IORT taking us through to 2019 when we hope the NHS will fund it. We would also like to adapt a second theatre for IORT use.
All in all, another busy and exciting year for PLANETS which will probably see some changes to our structure as we continue to grow and work more closely with teams from other cancer sites to help their patients see the same benefits that we all have over the last 5 years.
So, here’s to a cracking 2017 of fundraising and fun!!
Neil, Brian, Layla, Jo and the PLANETS team.
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