Scratch that IT4CH for us.
There are a great many children who due to illness or accident have to spend extended periods in hospital.
Over 240,000 children are patients in UK hospitals every year, some of them on short-term stay for broken bones and minor surgery, but a vast number of them are in and out of hospital for years due to long-term treatment for cancer, leukaemia, brain or spinal damage, severe orthopaedic surgery following car-crashes, and traumatic operations to transplant skin following burns to various parts of their bodies.
Children often have to go to specialist hospitals for bone marrow transplants, plastic surgery, spinal injuries and brain tumours, resulting in them being many miles from their families and friends. This can be daunting enough for adults, so can you imagine a young vulnerable child separated from family and undergoing treatment.
Our work is designed to help the children in a number of ways.
E-mail keeps them in touch with friends and family.
Our latest venture is video-conferencing, allowing children to link up from the hospital schools to main-stream schools where they can take part in live lessons with their school-friends.
Computers in hospital with active learning programs, so that the children can keep up with their education and at the times when they are down or in pain or just lonely they are able to enjoy playing games.
IT4CH plays a vital role in helping these children be as normal as possible in abnormal circumstances.
We are looking for companies to become friends and partners with the charity, to support us with donations, fundraising and even redundant equipment (there are closely controlled specifications for this)
Would you or your company be willing to make a donation to purchase IT equipment for your local children's hospital school?
Any amount, however small, would be used for the purchase of PCs, laptops and educational software (particularly literacy and maths), which would ensure that children in hospital do not suffer a lapse in their education during this enforced time away from their main-stream schools.
Please help in any way you can.
To help IT4CH please contact Pat through the website to discuss how to maximise your donation or activity for this worthwhile cause.
Many thanks
Pat Ryan
p.s. Speed Networking work to promote IT4CH and match donate extra payment made by the members when booking for a Speed Networking Event, just 20p doubled by us can make a big difference in a year.