Students and staff from Built Environment courses have raised £819 for East Kent Hospitals Charity, helping to make a real difference to a local children’s ward.
Fundraising efforts organised by the team have ensured the William Harvey Hospital in Ashford can add more games, toys and decorations to Padua Ward, where they look after poorly children.
The money was raised through a series of raffles as well as the sale of bespoke Christmas decorations that were made by students in on-site workshops. Carpentry created wooden reindeer whilst Plumbing made copper Christmas trees by bending and soldering old pipes together. The College’s Electrical and Engineering department went for more traditional decorations by creating custom fairy lights and baubles.
Darron Hughes, Carpentry Lecturer was the driving force for the project and helped students to develop their skills whilst championing social action projects.
Head of East Kent Hospitals Charity, Dee Neligan, visited EKC Canterbury College to meet with Darron, Industry Liaison Officer, Chloe and students on our Carpentry course to collect the funds.
Dee said upon receiving the donation: “We are absolutely thrilled to have the support from our local community, and I am delighted to be here to receive these funds. The students and staff have all worked so hard and I even bought some of the wooden reindeer that they made. This amazing fundraising will be used to make the experience of Hospital better for poorly children. These include buy games, toys and distraction items to help make it a bit less scary and a bit less boring.”
Darron and the rest of the Built Environment team are looking forward to the future and will be building on the impact they have had in this coming year.
Darron said: “It was a great collaborative effort from the whole team, and we all managed to raise a lot of money which was really good.”
“Through this project, we’ve now made good contacts in the NHS, and we are hoping that in the future we hold we can raise even more money for different units all over the hospital. We are hopefully having learners go out and doing some community work from them such as building planters, doing repairs and maintenance.”
You can explore more about our Built Environment courses and the work they do throughout the year in our community on our website.