Acorns Children’s Hospice in Walsall receives £3,000 in cash and donations from local Yodel colleagues
The teams at Yodel’s parcel sortation and transport centres in Willenhall have raised £3,000 in donations for Acorns Children’s Hospice in Walsall.
Hospice staff and children were presented with £1,000 cheque from Yodel transport operations manager, Ryan Kelly, and drivers have been delivering a broad range of gifts since their fundraising drive started in November.
Yodel HGV drivers, Barbara Cheetham and Tony Brown, rallied their colleagues at the parcel carrier to collect donations and money over the Christmas period, to support hospice staff and the children and families they care for. Donations included eight smart televisions with wall-mounting brackets for the children’s rooms, 20 sets of children’s bedding, a new fridge for the staff canteen as well as a range of toys and gifts, and 50 boxes of biscuits for the staff and volunteers to enjoy.
Yodel colleagues also organised a bake sale to raise funds, and last month children at the hospice participated in a Christmas card design competition. This resulted in the winning design being reproduced into 350 printed cards used by the hospice and Yodel. Acorns Children’s Hospice Trust was selected as the nominated charity for Yodel’s three sites at Willenhall.
It offers a variety of services for life limited and life threatened infants, children, young people and their families, across England. Acorns in the Black Country provides a home-from-home environment where each child receives a tailor-made package of individual care.
Jackie Griffiths, head nurse at the Acorns Children’s Hospice, said: “We would like to thank the Yodel team for their generous donations and ongoing support over the last few months. We have already put these items to great use, with the children particularly enjoying their new smart TVs and playing with the masses of new toys. Our staff are also extremely grateful with the additional resources supplied and we have already started looking into how we can invest this money to best improve our facilities into 2019 and beyond.”
Ryan Kelly, transport operations manager at Yodel, said: “We are pleased to support the local hospice, and to get everyone at Willenhall involved in such an important cause. It was a team morale booster to be able to give back to the children during the busy Christmas period.
“We hope that our efforts will make a difference at the hospice, and we look forward to working with the staff again in the near future.”