Families from across the north helped to provide a Bank Holiday boost for one of the region’s leading medical research charities as part of their Easter break at an award-winning holiday park.
Guests at Patrington Haven Leisure Park enjoyed decorating Easter bonnets, watching Punch and Judy shows, having a go at balloon modelling and joining an Easter egg hunt across the entire 23-acre site.
All the activities helped to raise funds for the Daisy Appeal, which has been adopted by the Patrington Haven team as their charity of the year.
Since its foundation in 2002 the Daisy Appeal has raised more than £22m. The Daisy Appeal Medical Research Centre opened at Castle Hill Hospital, Cottingham, in 2008 and was followed, in 2014, by the opening of the Jack Brignall PET-CT Scanning Centre, housing the first in a new type of Siemens scanner in the country.
The latest addition to the facilities is a Molecular Imaging Research Centre (MIRC) which has been built at a cost of £8.8m and will improve accuracy and detection rates for people with cancer, heart disease and dementia in Hull, East Yorkshire and Northern Lincolnshire.
The Patrington Haven fundraising team was set up at the beginning of 2022 by Vicki Jackson, Emma Pickersgill and Sandra Quayle to co-ordinate charity events at the leisure park which has more than 450 holiday homes and employs over 75 people.
Vicki said:
“We are in our second year of fundraising and it all resulted from the three of us getting together over a glass of prosecco!
“We do lucky number draws with the proceeds split between the charity and the winner and we also do all sorts of big events. Last month we had a quiz for St Patrick’s Day and the winner donated every penny of their £100 prize to the Daisy Appeal.
“We’re planning a charity sports day in August with children adults and staff taking part in traditional challenges including the sack race and the egg and spoon race. There will be plenty of other fundraising events before that.
“It’s a year-round programme of events because we only close the holiday homes for one month a year and even then the leisure facilities are open 364 days a year. We attract guests from along the M62 corridor and we build the fundraising into the fun programme during their stay here.”
Claire Levy, Fundraiser for the Daisy Appeal, said:
“The team at Patrington Haven and their guests have really egg-celled with their Easter fundraising activities and we’re really grateful to all involved.
“It’s the first big event of a one-year partnership we’re looking forward to the rest because in addition to the fundraising element it really helps us raise awareness of the Daisy Appeal. Most of the charity’s work is aimed at patients in East Yorkshire and Northern Lincolnshire but the research and the benefits are of national and even international significance.
“Through the work of the Daisy Appeal the University of Hull has secured membership of the elite UK PET Network, joining Imperial College London, King’s College London and the Universities of Cambridge, Cardiff, Edinburgh and Oxford. The partnership with Patrington Haven is helping us spread the word about the world-leading medical advances which the Daisy Appeal is pioneering in East Yorkshire.”
To find out more please visit https://daisyappeal.org/
Picture details:
Claire Levy (centre) with members of the fundraising team at Patrington Haven Leisure Park. From left: Emma Pickersgill, Ruby Pickersgill, Claire Levy, Sandra Quayle and Vicki Jackson.