Off-shore wind-farm operators Ørsted have pledged another £20k to support St Mary’s Hospice, by sponsoring their events and challenges again for 2022.
This is the third successive year the Danish-owned green energy company, which has a base in Barrow, has backed the charity, who provide a range of services throughout Furness and South Lakes.
And St Mary’s has leveraged those donations to raise over half a million pounds of income.
Head of Fundraising Helen Carlson said: “By sponsoring our events and challenges, Ørsted have made it possible for us to put on mountain walks, sky dives and our ever-popular Walk to Remember. Through their support as events sponsor, they take away a significant amount of the risk to us of hosting those challenges.
“Over the past three years events sponsored by Ørsted have raised a staggering £523,000 — a number that will only increase with things like Walk to Remember 2022 taking place next month. That’s the equivalent of running the hospice building for 41 days, or our Hospice at Home team making 1,538 visits to see patients.”
Many people think hospices are funded by government, when in reality only around a fifth of the funding they need comes from the NHS.
The rest — £2.5m for St Mary’s 2022 — has to be raised by hospices themselves, which is always difficult, but especially challenging during a cost of living crisis.
Helen added: “We’re really proud to work with Ørsted and of the relationship we’ve built over the last few years, since they came on board as a sponsor in 2019. One of their core values is ‘love your home’ and although that carries the strong green message that you’d link to a green energy company, we feel it fits really well with what we do too — looking after one another and always providing services free of charge at the point of need.”
Janet Gilmour, of Ørsted, said: “St. Mary’s and Ørsted share a common ethos on ‘Love Your Home’ and ‘Love your Community’ — it is a perfect match. At Ørsted we are committed to making a positive impact in the communities where we construct and operate our offshore wind farms in the UK and so, we are proud to sponsor St. Mary’s Hospice and support the work they do.”