NGNUK Blog
Well overdue….
Hi all,
Well it’s been a long time since we last posted so it’s time for a well overdue catch up. As usual, many things have been going on behind the scenes, with a number of updates that we hope to bring you up to date with.
It’s quite mad that since our last update in the New Year, we find out selves staring into the beginning of what hopefully will turn out to be another glorious summer.
So what’s been happening since?
Tesco Bags of Help
You may be aware that NGNPUK were chosen as one of Tesco’s charities in their bags for life scheme, running through January & February this year. This allowed members of the public to “choose” their charity by dropping a token into one of the voting stands.
We were pleased to receive enough public support to awarding us 3rd place and a donation of £1000 from Tesco’s and Groundforce. Every penny really does help and this goes a long way to supplying another syringe driver into our local community.
Thank you to everyone who voted for us, and for your selfies. Take a look at our gallery for the pictures.
Donations
As the New Year is often a time to commit to changes and new resolutions, NGNPUK are happy to help remove temptation by accepting any kinds of gifts for events and raffles we run regularly through the year. We were very fortunate to help some Thorney residents get 2019 off to a great start through their Christmas detox. Thank you to all those that donated extra, unwanted and leftover “goodies”. They been much appreciated and have helped to raise pennies for the syringe driver pot. We couldn’t achieve what we do without the help of our communities and hopefully, we’ve helped you stay on the path away from temptation!! ;-)
We were also fortunate to receive a donation from Whittlesey based Vanden Recycling following their Christmas hamper Raffle.
Lee was invited to take a look around the recycling plant where plastic materials are recycled back into raw grade materials to be reused in manufacturing. Vanden were looking for a local charity to support, and felt NGNPUK was the perfect fit.
Once again, thanks to the team at Vanden Recycling, and thank you to the sterling job you’re doing in the battle against the scourge of plastics….
One of the things we like to do is to get involved with those who are helping us. You will often find us doing talks at groups, visiting events and selling cakes. This year, we were chosen as the charity to benefit from the March Rotary and Lions Santa sleigh appeal.
Team NGNPUK were out in force with the March Rotary and Lions members visiting the public with Santa. It was wonderful to meet so many lovely people, and in particular seeing the faces as Santa stopped by to say hi. A total of £450 was donated to NGNPUK from both clubs. Thank you!
We had a lovely donation of £217.60 from a gentleman who donated a lot of craft bits and pieces owned by his late wife to be sold at the Enchanted Plaza. Thank you Sonia for organising this.
Thank you to the Ladies Fellowship Deeping St James who invited Louise along to talk about NGNPUK and explain what we do and why. The lovely ladies also donated £40 into the Syringe Driver fund.
We had an amazing donation from the Evelyn Trust of £4000 to buy more Syringe Drivers for the Cambridgeshire area who are currently struggling with low numbers of machines.
The Evelyn Trust support medical research and health and wellbeing projects in Cambridgeshire.
Well done to Lee who found and applied for this grant for us
Thanks to Jan Sharman for the donation of £33 for doing various sewing jobs for people. Instead of payment Jan very kindly asks for a small donation into the syringe driver pot. A great idea! Jan also likes to make syringe driver bags with a bit of a difference and has made some double and triple driver bags, some with pockets and buttons! Great ideas!
Artist Donation
Local artist Diana Blake sold some of her beautiful art work at the Friends of St Mary's art and craft exhibition at the weekend and donated the proceeds to NGNPUK. £135! Thank you Diana.
Sam had a Birthday!
Sam was our first attempt at the Facebook birthday fundraiser and her friends and family who were able to donate online raised and amazing £127! This was the first time anyone has used this method and it worked really well plus it was all free! No hidden charges for the charity so a great way to donate. Thanks again to everyone who donated. You are helping to make a difference.
Crafting
We’ve been so fortunate to have a wonderful community of crafting volunteers who continue to provide us with Syringe driver bags. We often have crafting groups come together to make bags for us and it if lovely to visit to see the sense of pride and community that coming together for a common cause has. We’ve also been very fortunate to be supported by our friend’s at Riverside beads and crafts, and the Enchanted Plaza, who have amongst other things organised free events such as “sew-alongs” for the public to come along and have a go at making driver bags.
A big thanks also goes out to the following crafters and individuals
Jo hunt, Joan, Gwen, Ann, Helen, Trish, Maureen, Shelagh, Pauline, Sandy Jan, Rosemary, Annette, Judi and Jennifer for the continued supply of bags. Special thanks to Rosemary Marson for the beautiful dragonfly tags made to put on the bags.
Thanks again to Lee Fisher at Interior Goods Direct in Wakefield for the constant supply of free material this is a massive help.
Also, a big thank you to Sonia and the team at the Enchanted Plaza in Yaxley, who have donated a charity shelf to NGNPUK in store. If you have anything handmade you would like to donate you can take it along there and Sonia will display it on the NGNPUK shelf.
These single use bags are in constant need, so if you would like to get involved, take a look at the easy to follow pattern or get in touch with us here an NGNPUK.
NGNPUK Quiz Night.
We had a quiz night at Childers in Whittlesey on 1st March and it was a good turn out again (thankfully no snow this year!) Everyone raised a whopping £1475.90! Enough to buy another machine outright!
Big thanks to everyone who donated a raffle prize. This is the first time we have ever had an anonymous donation for a prize so thank you to whoever it was who donated the 32”flat screen TV! Also to Gary, Chris, Andy and Denise for all their hard work setting the questions and running the quiz. Also to Joanne Ball who let us have the room at Childers for free and the caterers and bar staff who looked after us all so well. The food was fab!
Sams car boot
Sam has been busy on the car boot scene and managed to add another £85 into the pot. We had a donation of horse bits and bobs from Lin Griffin which really helped. Also donations from Charlotte Mariee from Bourne and Claire Juliet from Southampton.
Thanks!
Huge thanks to Melanie Gowler and her team at McCain for always doing any printing we need! Leaflets, driver bag instructions, you name it they print it! It really helps us get the word out there.
The help we get from McCain saves us so much time and money and means every penny goes into the pot for more machines!
The Buffaloes
Last year, Royal Antediluvian Order of Buffaloes in the Peterborough District had been fundraising and running events for their chosen charity, NGNPUK. This ranged from taking our unwanted stuff to car boot sales to hog roasts, family bingo evenings, race nights and many fundraising activities.
We’ve been very fortunate to spend some time with many of the Buffs and their generosity is amazing, so we were a little overwhelmed when we were presented with a cheque for £7683, a culmination of the entire years fundraising.
It is a truly staggering amount and they have made team NGNPUK (and our families) so welcome. It’s been a pleasure spending time with them all.
Letter B
It seems a month doesn’t go by whereby we’re not being contacted by Bruce and the team at the letter B public house. We were fortunate to receive another donation of £300 from Bruce and his amazing patrons following their quiz nights.
We really do appreciate all the support, and just a special mention to Bruce and the regulars at the Letter B who have supported NGNPUK from day one, and support so many other local and worthy charities. These guys are true charity and community super heroes.
Lost machines!
As you know if you follow our page all sorts of things can happen to Syringe Drivers, they can get lost, broken, destroyed (as people think they are disposable) or simply not returned after use.
As you may have seen from some of the posts we share many hospitals and hospice's struggle to have their machines returned to them. Although we fundraise for machines to be used in our communities we will always do our utmost to make sure any machine is returned to its rightful owner.
We have always kept an eye on internet selling pages and sure enough there are usually a few McKinley T34 syringe drivers for sale. Recently we were able to identify one machine that should never have been for sale as it belonged to a hospice in London.
As you can see from the photo (in the gallery) this machine had markings saying St Chris. After a little research we suspected this machine belonged to St Christopher’s Hospice in London. We contacted them and they confirmed it was indeed one of their machines. We were also told how they serve 5 boroughs in London and they do sadly loose around 10 machines a year despite going to extreme measures to get them back. Some of their machines have even been found for sale on car boot sales!
We were very interested in how they tackle the issues of getting their machines back and found that as well as these stencil markings they also use 3 hard to remove labels on each machine which also withstand harsh chemicals, as you can see from the photo of this driver these have been removed.
This machine is now a police matter and we hope the hospice are able to get this vital piece of equipment back but this goes to show what hospitals and hospices can be up against. There are still machines for sale and these have all been looked into.
Syringe drivers can ONLY be used by TRAINED Professional’s. They also need to be correctly calibrated and serviced yearly. Each machine has a unique serial number and when they go in for servicing this is checked against who purchased the machine. If these do not tally questions are asked.
We know are never going to stop this sort of thing completely but the more we can share information about these machines the more chance there is of them getting back to where they should be.
As a charity we have now looked into these stencil markings and going forward have decided to use this on all of the new Syringe Drivers we donate. It will cost around £1.15 per machine and if in the future it means a machine gets back to its rightful home then we feel it is well worth it. We have also shared this information with other hospitals who we know are struggling to get their machines back. We will always do our utmost to make sure ANY syringe driver gets back to its rightful home, we know as you all do just how many people one machine can help.
Driver donations
This year has been the most “frustrating” one so far in terms of Syringe driver delivery. We have our own timetable to deliver a batch of drivers roughly every 6 months. This ensures that they don’t all have to be serviced or replaced at the same time.
This year, the McKinley T34 has been due an “upgrade”. While there is no impact on those 61 drivers we’re delivered to date, it has meant that we’ve been unable to buy any newer ones until the “upgraded” model has been completed, signed off by the manufactures and the CPFT as being fit for purpose.
However, as we stand today (June) we hope to have some more positive news of a handover in the next few weeks!!
In the meantime, we have been able to donate 10 additional lock boxes to replace those that have been damaged during the course of use.
Running
Now for those that follow our Facebook page, they will have recently seen our very own Louise’s 1000 mile challenge for 2019. This is her commitment to run 1000 miles whist raising some money for NGNPUK at the same time.
With BT Mydonate closing down this was also a good time to try a new online fundraising platform and after a lot of research (as we do) we decided Virginmoneygiving had to be the one for us.
Why? Well, following on from Sam and Lee’s efforts over the last couple of years in the Perkins Great eastern run, Louise (an “exer-phobe” who would never be able to run) committed to running the event in 2018.
She was so elated to not only have completed it but raised money as well, that she has now spent the last several months running and racing. Her mission is simply to run 1000 miles in 2019. If you’d like to sponsor her, follow the link below:
https://uk.virginmoneygiving.com/fundraiser-display/showROFundraiserPage?pageId=1030021
Following the running theme, huge congratulations to John Taylor our friend from Liverpool. John’s wife Julie Taylor runs the wonderful charity, Making for charity, and has been an absolute godsend in our own drive for syringe driver bags.
John ran the London Marathon and raised £1074.55 that he donated to NGNPUK. This money will go a long way to buying another driver for our communities and we’re honoured that John (and Julie) thought of us!
To find out more about making for charity, see the link below.
https://www.facebook.com/makingforcharity/
Trikefest 2019
We were so pleased to have been approached by Trikes R Us again who had decided to support NGNPUK as their charity of choice for their Trike fest event held in Littleport over the late May bank holiday weekend.
It was a beautiful weekend, and a special thanks to Sam’s mum Eileen for volunteering to help with the raffle for our booze hamper which raised £83.
Collection tubs
Thanks to everyone who keeps putting their spare change in the Pink NGNPUK collection tubs it’s all adding up.
Cross Keys in Wansford £68.27
Letter B Whittlesey £84.30
City Care Centre £ 24.81
Westfield Nursery £14.28
Fen Wah £38.34
Finally, we’ve got a few up and coming dates for your diary:
There will be lots of other things come up during the year too just keep an eye on our page for details.
Wow 6 months in one go! We really must try and do the blog more often. Maybe a new year’s resolution for 2020.
Louise, Samantha and Lee
Team NGNPUK.
.
Well overdue….
Hi all,
Well it’s been a long time since we last posted so it’s time for a well overdue catch up. As usual, many things have been going on behind the scenes, with a number of updates that we hope to bring you up to date with.
It’s quite mad that since our last update in the New Year, we find out selves staring into the beginning of what hopefully will turn out to be another glorious summer.
So what’s been happening since?
Tesco Bags of Help
You may be aware that NGNPUK were chosen as one of Tesco’s charities in their bags for life scheme, running through January & February this year. This allowed members of the public to “choose” their charity by dropping a token into one of the voting stands.
We were pleased to receive enough public support to awarding us 3rd place and a donation of £1000 from Tesco’s and Groundforce. Every penny really does help and this goes a long way to supplying another syringe driver into our local community.
Thank you to everyone who voted for us, and for your selfies. Take a look at our gallery for the pictures.
Donations
As the New Year is often a time to commit to changes and new resolutions, NGNPUK are happy to help remove temptation by accepting any kinds of gifts for events and raffles we run regularly through the year. We were very fortunate to help some Thorney residents get 2019 off to a great start through their Christmas detox. Thank you to all those that donated extra, unwanted and leftover “goodies”. They been much appreciated and have helped to raise pennies for the syringe driver pot. We couldn’t achieve what we do without the help of our communities and hopefully, we’ve helped you stay on the path away from temptation!! ;-)
We were also fortunate to receive a donation from Whittlesey based Vanden Recycling following their Christmas hamper Raffle.
Lee was invited to take a look around the recycling plant where plastic materials are recycled back into raw grade materials to be reused in manufacturing. Vanden were looking for a local charity to support, and felt NGNPUK was the perfect fit.
Once again, thanks to the team at Vanden Recycling, and thank you to the sterling job you’re doing in the battle against the scourge of plastics….
One of the things we like to do is to get involved with those who are helping us. You will often find us doing talks at groups, visiting events and selling cakes. This year, we were chosen as the charity to benefit from the March Rotary and Lions Santa sleigh appeal.
Team NGNPUK were out in force with the March Rotary and Lions members visiting the public with Santa. It was wonderful to meet so many lovely people, and in particular seeing the faces as Santa stopped by to say hi. A total of £450 was donated to NGNPUK from both clubs. Thank you!
We had a lovely donation of £217.60 from a gentleman who donated a lot of craft bits and pieces owned by his late wife to be sold at the Enchanted Plaza. Thank you Sonia for organising this.
Thank you to the Ladies Fellowship Deeping St James who invited Louise along to talk about NGNPUK and explain what we do and why. The lovely ladies also donated £40 into the Syringe Driver fund.
We had an amazing donation from the Evelyn Trust of £4000 to buy more Syringe Drivers for the Cambridgeshire area who are currently struggling with low numbers of machines.
The Evelyn Trust support medical research and health and wellbeing projects in Cambridgeshire.
Well done to Lee who found and applied for this grant for us
Thanks to Jan Sharman for the donation of £33 for doing various sewing jobs for people. Instead of payment Jan very kindly asks for a small donation into the syringe driver pot. A great idea! Jan also likes to make syringe driver bags with a bit of a difference and has made some double and triple driver bags, some with pockets and buttons! Great ideas!
Artist Donation
Local artist Diana Blake sold some of her beautiful art work at the Friends of St Mary's art and craft exhibition at the weekend and donated the proceeds to NGNPUK. £135! Thank you Diana.
Sam had a Birthday!
Sam was our first attempt at the Facebook birthday fundraiser and her friends and family who were able to donate online raised and amazing £127! This was the first time anyone has used this method and it worked really well plus it was all free! No hidden charges for the charity so a great way to donate. Thanks again to everyone who donated. You are helping to make a difference.
Crafting
We’ve been so fortunate to have a wonderful community of crafting volunteers who continue to provide us with Syringe driver bags. We often have crafting groups come together to make bags for us and it if lovely to visit to see the sense of pride and community that coming together for a common cause has. We’ve also been very fortunate to be supported by our friend’s at Riverside beads and crafts, and the Enchanted Plaza, who have amongst other things organised free events such as “sew-alongs” for the public to come along and have a go at making driver bags.
A big thanks also goes out to the following crafters and individuals
- Fitzwilliam & Bits n Pieces Quilters who also donated £700 to the syringe driver fund.
- Jenny Bowles
- Orton Waterville Methodist chapel Group who also donated £400 to the Syringe Driver fund.
- Market Deeping Hijackers
Jo hunt, Joan, Gwen, Ann, Helen, Trish, Maureen, Shelagh, Pauline, Sandy Jan, Rosemary, Annette, Judi and Jennifer for the continued supply of bags. Special thanks to Rosemary Marson for the beautiful dragonfly tags made to put on the bags.
Thanks again to Lee Fisher at Interior Goods Direct in Wakefield for the constant supply of free material this is a massive help.
Also, a big thank you to Sonia and the team at the Enchanted Plaza in Yaxley, who have donated a charity shelf to NGNPUK in store. If you have anything handmade you would like to donate you can take it along there and Sonia will display it on the NGNPUK shelf.
These single use bags are in constant need, so if you would like to get involved, take a look at the easy to follow pattern or get in touch with us here an NGNPUK.
NGNPUK Quiz Night.
We had a quiz night at Childers in Whittlesey on 1st March and it was a good turn out again (thankfully no snow this year!) Everyone raised a whopping £1475.90! Enough to buy another machine outright!
Big thanks to everyone who donated a raffle prize. This is the first time we have ever had an anonymous donation for a prize so thank you to whoever it was who donated the 32”flat screen TV! Also to Gary, Chris, Andy and Denise for all their hard work setting the questions and running the quiz. Also to Joanne Ball who let us have the room at Childers for free and the caterers and bar staff who looked after us all so well. The food was fab!
Sams car boot
Sam has been busy on the car boot scene and managed to add another £85 into the pot. We had a donation of horse bits and bobs from Lin Griffin which really helped. Also donations from Charlotte Mariee from Bourne and Claire Juliet from Southampton.
Thanks!
Huge thanks to Melanie Gowler and her team at McCain for always doing any printing we need! Leaflets, driver bag instructions, you name it they print it! It really helps us get the word out there.
The help we get from McCain saves us so much time and money and means every penny goes into the pot for more machines!
The Buffaloes
Last year, Royal Antediluvian Order of Buffaloes in the Peterborough District had been fundraising and running events for their chosen charity, NGNPUK. This ranged from taking our unwanted stuff to car boot sales to hog roasts, family bingo evenings, race nights and many fundraising activities.
We’ve been very fortunate to spend some time with many of the Buffs and their generosity is amazing, so we were a little overwhelmed when we were presented with a cheque for £7683, a culmination of the entire years fundraising.
It is a truly staggering amount and they have made team NGNPUK (and our families) so welcome. It’s been a pleasure spending time with them all.
Letter B
It seems a month doesn’t go by whereby we’re not being contacted by Bruce and the team at the letter B public house. We were fortunate to receive another donation of £300 from Bruce and his amazing patrons following their quiz nights.
We really do appreciate all the support, and just a special mention to Bruce and the regulars at the Letter B who have supported NGNPUK from day one, and support so many other local and worthy charities. These guys are true charity and community super heroes.
Lost machines!
As you know if you follow our page all sorts of things can happen to Syringe Drivers, they can get lost, broken, destroyed (as people think they are disposable) or simply not returned after use.
As you may have seen from some of the posts we share many hospitals and hospice's struggle to have their machines returned to them. Although we fundraise for machines to be used in our communities we will always do our utmost to make sure any machine is returned to its rightful owner.
We have always kept an eye on internet selling pages and sure enough there are usually a few McKinley T34 syringe drivers for sale. Recently we were able to identify one machine that should never have been for sale as it belonged to a hospice in London.
As you can see from the photo (in the gallery) this machine had markings saying St Chris. After a little research we suspected this machine belonged to St Christopher’s Hospice in London. We contacted them and they confirmed it was indeed one of their machines. We were also told how they serve 5 boroughs in London and they do sadly loose around 10 machines a year despite going to extreme measures to get them back. Some of their machines have even been found for sale on car boot sales!
We were very interested in how they tackle the issues of getting their machines back and found that as well as these stencil markings they also use 3 hard to remove labels on each machine which also withstand harsh chemicals, as you can see from the photo of this driver these have been removed.
This machine is now a police matter and we hope the hospice are able to get this vital piece of equipment back but this goes to show what hospitals and hospices can be up against. There are still machines for sale and these have all been looked into.
Syringe drivers can ONLY be used by TRAINED Professional’s. They also need to be correctly calibrated and serviced yearly. Each machine has a unique serial number and when they go in for servicing this is checked against who purchased the machine. If these do not tally questions are asked.
We know are never going to stop this sort of thing completely but the more we can share information about these machines the more chance there is of them getting back to where they should be.
As a charity we have now looked into these stencil markings and going forward have decided to use this on all of the new Syringe Drivers we donate. It will cost around £1.15 per machine and if in the future it means a machine gets back to its rightful home then we feel it is well worth it. We have also shared this information with other hospitals who we know are struggling to get their machines back. We will always do our utmost to make sure ANY syringe driver gets back to its rightful home, we know as you all do just how many people one machine can help.
Driver donations
This year has been the most “frustrating” one so far in terms of Syringe driver delivery. We have our own timetable to deliver a batch of drivers roughly every 6 months. This ensures that they don’t all have to be serviced or replaced at the same time.
This year, the McKinley T34 has been due an “upgrade”. While there is no impact on those 61 drivers we’re delivered to date, it has meant that we’ve been unable to buy any newer ones until the “upgraded” model has been completed, signed off by the manufactures and the CPFT as being fit for purpose.
However, as we stand today (June) we hope to have some more positive news of a handover in the next few weeks!!
In the meantime, we have been able to donate 10 additional lock boxes to replace those that have been damaged during the course of use.
Running
Now for those that follow our Facebook page, they will have recently seen our very own Louise’s 1000 mile challenge for 2019. This is her commitment to run 1000 miles whist raising some money for NGNPUK at the same time.
With BT Mydonate closing down this was also a good time to try a new online fundraising platform and after a lot of research (as we do) we decided Virginmoneygiving had to be the one for us.
Why? Well, following on from Sam and Lee’s efforts over the last couple of years in the Perkins Great eastern run, Louise (an “exer-phobe” who would never be able to run) committed to running the event in 2018.
She was so elated to not only have completed it but raised money as well, that she has now spent the last several months running and racing. Her mission is simply to run 1000 miles in 2019. If you’d like to sponsor her, follow the link below:
https://uk.virginmoneygiving.com/fundraiser-display/showROFundraiserPage?pageId=1030021
Following the running theme, huge congratulations to John Taylor our friend from Liverpool. John’s wife Julie Taylor runs the wonderful charity, Making for charity, and has been an absolute godsend in our own drive for syringe driver bags.
John ran the London Marathon and raised £1074.55 that he donated to NGNPUK. This money will go a long way to buying another driver for our communities and we’re honoured that John (and Julie) thought of us!
To find out more about making for charity, see the link below.
https://www.facebook.com/makingforcharity/
Trikefest 2019
We were so pleased to have been approached by Trikes R Us again who had decided to support NGNPUK as their charity of choice for their Trike fest event held in Littleport over the late May bank holiday weekend.
It was a beautiful weekend, and a special thanks to Sam’s mum Eileen for volunteering to help with the raffle for our booze hamper which raised £83.
Collection tubs
Thanks to everyone who keeps putting their spare change in the Pink NGNPUK collection tubs it’s all adding up.
Cross Keys in Wansford £68.27
Letter B Whittlesey £84.30
City Care Centre £ 24.81
Westfield Nursery £14.28
Fen Wah £38.34
Finally, we’ve got a few up and coming dates for your diary:
- Saturday 3rd August - the annual "Ukulele Picnic by the River" in Wansford. A wonderful afternoon of music in a beautiful private gardens. Contact us for further details and tickets.
- Sunday 8th September - we will be at the Whittlesey Festival again this year on with our Jam jar tombola (any filled jam jars would be gratefully received).
- Sunday 3rd November - we have the early bird Christmas Craft Fayre (I know the C.. word) at the Eastrea Centre (please contact Nicky Bedford for a stall). If anyone would like to make us a cake for our coffee and cake stall we would really appreciate that. We had some AMAZING cakes last year :)
- Saturday 20th June 2020 - We are also excited to announce we have booked our second summer ball at the Great Northern Hotel on 20th June 2020. Yes it’s a year away but it give you time to find your outfit ;)
There will be lots of other things come up during the year too just keep an eye on our page for details.
Wow 6 months in one go! We really must try and do the blog more often. Maybe a new year’s resolution for 2020.
Louise, Samantha and Lee
Team NGNPUK.
.
RSS Feed
