It's extraordinary to think that St Leonard's Hospice has been caring for the people of York and the surrounding area for twenty five years.  This is especially so given that every year we have to raise about 75% of the nearly £3.5m needed to provide palliative care and a community for both our in patients and our day care patients.  St Leonard's only exists because of its many and generous supporters.

In this silver jubilee year we want to do something very special.  We have launched a new initiative called Hospice@Home which, as the name implies, aims to bring St Leonard's experience, skills and high-quality care into the community and to provide 'hands-on' palliative care to patients in their own home.  This will enable us to help even more people than we could  if we were limited to using only our in house facilities.

We also want to mark this special year with a drive to raise money through a number of new ideas.  One of the ideas is to have a sponsored trek in Nepal, something we haven't done before.  The route is along the Bhara Pokhari ridge over several days and is in an area foreigners hardly ever go so we expect to be able to help people in the villages we pass through on our trek as well as fulfill our aims.  It is going to be quite an adventure for us too so, of course, we're paying for all our own costs and any money donated will go fully toward St Leonard's Hospice.

Margaret and I are committed to St Leonard's given both our histories and our experiences there.  Margaret is a recently qualified bereavement counsellor and I'm the chairman so taking on the challenge in this special year seemed very natural to us and training is well under way.  It also seems very natural to to turn to our many friends to help at such a time.

Please help us to turn this silver year into gold and thanks for taking the time to visit my JustGiving page.

Donating through JustGiving is simple, fast and totally secure. Your details are safe with JustGiving – they’ll never sell them on or send unwanted emails. Once you donate, they’ll send your money directly to the charity and make sure Gift Aid is reclaimed on every eligible donation by a UK taxpayer. So it’s the most efficient way to donate - we raise more, whilst saving time and cutting costs for the charity.