Christmas Grotto party at Queen Elizabeth Hospital with Eastends Star and Santa
We don't often post on here the charity work we do, we do it because we want to, not because we want to profit from it or show off. However, in this case we made a small exception because it directly involved our own son. We make no secret of the fact that he has Leaukemia and we work very closely with various hospital to make sustainable and lasting improvements to their equipment and their play facilities.
We also do short-term things as well (because to put it bluntly some of the children only have a short time). This was a good recent example of one of the short term things we do to bring a little happiness in the interim. Sadly a lot of the children are too sickly to go to santa trips. They can't mix with other people in Bluewater or Ruxley, these things are just out of the question for them.
We decided to do something about it and this is one of several planned visits. We took our christmas grotto and our Santa and took an enormous amount of really nice presents (so many in fact that there was more presents than children, so lots are left for over the Christmas period). We also managed to bring Eastenders star Jacqueline Jossa who played Lauren Branning. She is the sister of a local face painter Katrina who is super supportive of a lot of our charity events and often attends providing the event her time at a reduced rate and often for free. Celebrities are often over-looked for their charity work, but there was no press, no crew, no tweets from her, no publicist or anything of that sort present. She simply want to come with her sister when she heard and brought some presents of her own (leaving many of them for other children without any idea who donated them).
We're extremely proud to call Tiny Town Soft Play our friends; personally as well as professionally. They was more than happy to help provide their time at the event with glitter tattoos, setting up and also came stocked with a tonne of stockings filled with presents for the children of all wards at Queen Elizabeth hospital!
The party was very well received by the children. It wasn't that well attended, which in some ways you could say is a shame, but we see this as a huge result, as it means the child ward was only half full at the time (which is always a very good thing). For the children that was there though, it was very special and quite meaningful for one little boy who was their paying tribute to his brother who sadly passed away from cancer just a few months previously. He was under care of Tiger Ward and paid tribute to his brother by having his face painted with a tiger. In truth, it was worth putting on for this little boy alone.
Christmas Grotto Hire Bexley
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