Gordons raises £24,000 for Yorkshire-based infants’ charity
Tuesday 7th April 2015
Yorkshire law firm Gordons has raised £24,000 for charity the Friends of Alfie Martin in the last 12 months.
Partners and staff from the firm’s offices generated the funds, with help from clients, after choosing to make the organisation their chosen charity of the year.
The Friends of Alfie Martin raises money to buy, improve and maintain neonatal equipment for critically-ill babies in Yorkshire. The organisation was founded by Sicklinghall-based Fiona Martin, following the death of her baby son, Alfie, in February 2002, after a prolonged wait for a suitably-equipped ambulance to take him to a neonatal unit.
Gordons’ team raised the money through activities including running marathons, selling baked goods, operating quiz nights, cycling hundreds of miles, tackling assault courses and knitting stuffed animals for sale.
The main beneficiary of The Friends of Alfie Martins’ efforts is Leeds General Infirmary’s neonatal unit, which cares for the sickest babies in Yorkshire, receiving 1,700 patients a year. The charity has provided over £250,000-worth of technology for the unit, donating more money each year than the unit receives from the NHS.
Money raised by Gordons has been used by the charity to help buy vital additional equipment, costing more than £30,000, for the unit. This has included a servo cooling machine and mattress, as well as a cerebral function monitor. The mattress and monitor have extended the hospital’s ability to provide groundbreaking therapeutic hypothermia to babies suffering brain injuries during labour and birth, which can help them avoid sustaining long-term disabilities.
In addition, Gordons’ donation will help the charity to buy a transport trolley and ventilator, which will permit the emergency transfer of babies from the neonatal unit at Leeds’ St James’s Hospital to the general infirmary site.
Fiona Martin said: ‘We’d like to say a huge thanks to Gordons, our first corporate sponsors, for their extraordinary fundraising and support. We’ve been overwhelmed with the genuine interest and enthusiasm with which the teams there and their clients have embraced our cause.