21 March 2007
RAF RAISE £2,000 FOR ROYAL STAR & GARTER HOMES AT AIR SHOWS
Wing Commander Neal Newnham, Officer commanding 20 Squadron, RAF Wittering and Squadron Leader Peter Keenlyside, visited The Royal Star & Garter Home, Richmond last week to present a cheque to residents for £2,000, after 20 Squadron chose the Royal Star & Garter as their Charity of the year.
Squadron Leader Keenlyside was the RAF’s 2006 Harrier Display Pilot and attended 50 Air shows throughout 2006, performing to crowds of up to 500,000 strong. As the Squadron’s chosen Charity, he and his team were also busy promoting the work of the Royal Star & Garter. At every air show, the Squadrons organised collections, displayed literature about the Charity and included the Charity name on all DVDs sold of the Harrier Displays.
During their visit to the Home, Neal and Peter were delighted to meet residents Peter Devenish and Margaret Davidson, both formerly in the RAF, who accepted the cheque on behalf of their fellow residents.
Brian Gander, Deputy Director of Fundraising for the Home said, “We are extremely grateful for this great support and for all the hard work by the RAF Squadron which resulted in this splendid donation. Our residents are always delighted to see their younger colleagues from the forces and we really appreciate them taking the time out of their very busy schedules to visit us.”
20 Squadron also collected for the Acorns Hospice Trust and Peterborough Special Care Babies Unit who each also received £2,000.
About the Royal Star & Garter Charity – founded in 1916.
The Royal Star & Garter Charity has been caring for disabled ex-Service personnel since 1916. The Charity offers the best in nursing and therapeutic care for anyone is physically disabled or incapacitated and has served in Her Majesty’s Forces. There are also a wide variety of leisure activities available for our residents to enjoy, both internally and at outside venues. The Royal Star & Garter Charity is embarking on an ambitious and wide reaching project to build new homes, in the South West London area and elsewhere, to provide specialist care for elderly disabled ex-Service people in the best modern surroundings and will include a specialist dementia wing. The first of these will open in Solihull in the summer of 2008.
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FURTHER INFO: Rebecca Spencer, Marketing & Communications Co-ordinator, The Royal Star & Garter Homes.
TEL: 020 8439 8118 or EMAIL: rebecca.spencer@starandgarter.org