This year we chose to support Group B Strep Support as our chosen charity for 2019.
This is a charity that is close to a member of the team, after her new born baby contracted Strep B in 2018. After going through this and seeing how it affected Monika Gzara and her family it was important that we supported her and the Charity in a hope to help raise awareness to new mothers and prevent any more new-borns contracting Strep B.
We started with an Armature Charity boxing match, where Emma McCrory put on her gloves, trained intensely for 10 weeks and then got in the ring in front of hundreds of people to secure a draw and raise hundreds of pounds.
Then we had the owner of Platinum Care Solutions Joanne Barry take on a paddle board race around the Solent for 8 miles on what was luckily a mild and sunny day. It wasn’t an easy challenge and Jo raised a lovely £150 for this event.
We had various Cake Sales, Raffles and Galas throughout the year where we attended local events and held open days. It was great to share the awareness of the charity and we got to hear about other peoples stories of how their babies had been affected by Strep B which continued to help drive our efforts throughout the year.
Then our biggest ever charity challenge in the business was held in November where Natalie Dobson and her friend Stacey Kircher travelled to Peru for a 4 day trek to Machu Picchu, which consisted of what felt like a constant uphill battle with 10 hours of climbing each day, including reaching the highest point of 4,200ft while tackling altitude sickness. Each day was a 5am start and back at camp and asleep for 830pm through the thunder and lightning storms in the evenings.
We finally finished with a charity raffle which has proven to be successful each year and this year continued to be the same.
We are really pleased to have supported Group B Strep Support and their efforts in raising awareness and funds for this amazing cause, and we are proud to announce that our total fundraising for Group B Strep Support this year totalled at £2485.50.
