i just feel so awfull that children and hospice are in the same sentence.
Same here. My mum does a lot of work with the local hospital raising funds for the hospital's breast care service (she was diagnosed with breast cancer nearly 7 years ago now). She and a friend run a second-hand bookstall weekly at the hospital and over the past five years have raised just over £35,000 between them through that and other fundraising activities. I help them out when I can and I designed and maintain their website.
Our local hospice has been the focus of a lot of personal tragedy over the last couple of years or so. We've lost a couple of good friends to cancer there, and last year also my grandma to cancer also - she also died at the hospice. About three years ago there was a huge local campaign to set up a dedicated children's hospice, which is finally becoming a reality - it opens this spring - with loads of local publicity on local radio, in local newspapers etc.
My mum writes poetry, and she's written poetry anthologies for both of the hospices to raise funds - five over the past few years if I remember rightly. She does the poetry and I do the editing/proofing and layout for her and make the printing arrangements with a local printer. She sells them locally and managed to persuade a couple of local bookshops to stock them. I'm just finishing off laying out her latest one, and then for the next project she wants to do a compilation of all the ones she's done so far and I'm going to set that one up for her and publish it through Lulu.com.
The medical world plays a large part in my life with the medical problems I have, and I usually end up in hospital a couple of times a year at our nearest local neurosurgery centre (over in the next city). They have a charity dedicated to raising funds for the neurosurgery intensive care, and having seen first-hand the amazing work they do, the terrible operations that some people endure, and the highly specialised equipment they need (I'm fortunate that I've never yet ended up in the intensive care unit, but I've been in the high dependency unit next door on more than one occasion), I can't praise them highly enough. Their Neurocare charity sells cards, Christmas decorations and toys, teddies and stuffed animals mainly, and every time I'm in there I make a point harassing the nurses until they let me off the ward to go and buy something from their stall - it costs me a small fortune every time I get taken in, and the sofa in my office in the spare room is over-flowing with teddies, which I name after the doctors and nurses, but they're worth every penny.
