Brain Game to boost new Big Build hospice appeal
THE famous annual Brain Game – regarded as one of the business community’s biggest charity fund raisers of the year – has set its biggest target yet.
Marie Curie Cancer Care, the main beneficiary of the black tie event, now in its tenth year – has launched the Big Build Appeal to raise £7m to help rebuild the charity’s hospice in Solihull. The cause is given added poignancy with the involvement of the family of Ronnie Bowker, the former Ernst & Young senior partner who died at the hospice last year.
The Brain Game is a scaled-up version of a pub quiz, with celebrities acting as quiz masters, with teams from firms across the West Midlands battling it out through eight rounds of brain teasers. This year’s event is held at the ICC on October 6, and organisers are hopeful that money raised will equal or surpass that of previous years, when up to £130,000 has been collected.
The Big Build appeal was given a high-profile launch at Birmingham Council House when appeal chairman and former DLA Piper senior partner Chris Rawstrom called on the business community to weigh-in and support the charity.
The new hospice (pictured) will replace the 100-year-old building in Warwick Road, Solihull, which has run out of space for the demands made of it, and cannot house the kind of modern services the charity wants to offer patients. The new hospice, due to open in 2013, will provide a wider range of care and support services, reaching more local people with terminal cancer and other illnesses.
Work on the £21m project starts in May, with more than half the money committed by the NHS. Marie Curie has already secured £2.5m of the remainder from private donors and trusts, leaving the public phase of the Big Build Appeal to raise £7m.
In the new hospice, says the charity, each patient will have a spacious single room with en-suite facilities to allow privacy and dignity, and rooms will have direct access to gardens.
A significantly expanded day therapy unit for outpatients will have capacity for twice as many patients, giving better access to symptom management therapies and group activities.
The new hospice will offer greater capacity for more counselling and emotional support to help patients cope with their illness day-to-day.
To find out more about the Big Build Appeal and to buy tickets for the Brain Game, click here.
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