An Amazing Act of Kindness

I want to share with you an act of kindness that blew me (and others) away last week - it's an amazingly heart-warming story, with, I have to say, a little call to action at the end.

Many of you will know that I'm very proud to be a Trustee of a great Cancer support charity based in Milton Keynes, called Al's Pals.

Based on the CEO's ( Suzanne Brown ) father's dying wish that a support service be set up to provide extra support for cancer patients and their families, Suzanne works tirelessly to raise money, manage the charity, organise and inspire volunteers AND support many patients herself.

As a board of trustees we've been piloting a programme to enlist the support of local businesses by asking for regular sponsorship type donations - called Al's Business Pals, we ask businesses of all sizes to support with regular (monthly) giving, in order to help us sustain the charity's cash-flow for the essential work we do. And I'm pleased to say we have a number of businesses now, doing just that, with regular monthly payments of ￡100 to ￡500.

At the Trustee's meeting last week, Suzanne described a situation that happened recently where she'd utilised one of the regular donations for a specific thing for a patient.

A young, (24 year old lady) terminally ill patient had been told she's approaching end of life - her dying wish was to go to a theatre musical with all her family. She'd never been, and the family didn't have the resources to make this happen. It turned out her favourite musical was Bugsy Malone - AND it happened to be on in Milton Keynes a few weeks ago. Upon hearing this story, our awesome Suzanne, decided to divert the October regular donation from one of our businesses and use it to buy (what turned out to be the last 6) tickets for the Saturday Matinee of this show, for this girl and her family. THIS is what Al's Pals is for!!

Needless to say the trustees supported this move unequivocally and pledged to do what we can to allow Al's Pals to do even more of this.

So, here's the call to action - we need more financial support. If 100 companies in the MK, Northants, Beds, Bucks areas were to pledge a regular ￡100 per month - this would be a game changing amount of cash-flow for our hugely important charity! We actually need ￡187 per day just to stand still! So, if this is something you feel you could help with, please drop me a DM and I'll forward all the relevant stuff.

I'm sure you'll agree that these are difficult and testing times - and the importance of kindness and humanity is really brought home to us, when someone is facing their final days. Please help if you can or forward this on. Many thanks.