More Smiles abseil raises over £15k for children's intensive care unit at St Mary's

More Smiles abseil raises over £15k for children's intensive care unit at St Mary's

12 July 2017

The appeal, a joint initiative between Imperial Health Charity and COSMIC, is aiming to raise £2m to upgrade and expand the hospital’s children’s intensive care unit, transforming it into a state-of-the-art facility that matches the expertise of its staff.

Despite the weather, which saw participants braving sun, rain, wind and hail, the day was a huge success and raised even more than last year’s impressive £10,600, all of which will all go towards helping the hospital treat more critically ill children.

One of the abseilers, Natalie Richardson, was taking part in honour of her son Luca, who tragically passed away after being treated in the unit.

“I thought the leaning over the edge would be really hard but actually that was the easiest bit!” she said. “I’m not too bad with heights. The hardest thing was coming back to the hospital because we haven’t been back since we lost our son eight years ago so actually after getting past that, the abseil was easy.”

Natalie and her partner, Toby, began fundraising shortly after they lost their son as a way of giving back to the staff that fought so hard for their son and have raised over £66,500 to date.

“It’s an on-going thing for us really. We’ve done a marathon and loads of our friends and family have done so many different events. We’ve got a charity golf day coming up which last year raised about £15,000!”

To find out more about the More Smiles Appeal, including how you can get involved, visit moresmiles.org.uk