Celebrating 75 Years of the NHS with St George's Hospital Charity
14 July 2023
On 5 July 2023 the NHS officially turned 75 years old. To commemorate this milestone and honour the incredible work of the NHS, we organised a series of events and initiatives from brilliant tea parties to parkrun takeovers, fundraising activities to artistic endeavours.
We ate cake…
Over these past few weeks, St George’s staff, patients, and members of the community have gathered to host NHS Tea Parties. This served as an opportunity to get together and share stories, laughter, donations and, of course, delicious tea and cake in honour of 75 years of the NHS. Through these tea parties, we have raised £353 and counting!
We also hosted our own party with a bake sale on 5 July. We sold an array of delectable treats generously donated by staff members and local companies, including our Ingredients Restaurant, Gails and Waitrose. Also, our partners Peabodys got involved in selling some delicious sweet treats A huge thank you to these companies as with their support we raised a huge £702!
We want to give a special shoutout to Tooting Cake Box and our Mitie team at the hospital for each donating a huge cake for our cake-cutting ceremony which was performed by Jacqueline Totterdell (Group Chief Executive Epsom & St Helier University Hospitals & St George’s University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust) and Dr Rosena Allin-Khan (local MP for Tooting and doctor at St George’s).
We celebrated with the local community…
We have been fortunate to visit so many local schools to hold assemblies, engaging students with interactive sessions about the history of St George’s Hospital, the staff we have working here and its impact on the community. As a part of the celebrations, the children have also participated in fundraising activities by wearing blue, hosting bake sales, and making donations, further highlighting the community's support for their local hospital. So far, we have raised a huge £701.60 from this initiative and look forward to continuing this endeavour in the future.
Continuing our partnership with South-West London Starbucks we set up a stand at the Wimbledon Hill store to speak to the community about St George’s Hospital on the NHS 75 birthday and we got the amazing opportunity to raise funds alongside Centre Court Shopping Centre giving out strawberries and cream in celebration of Wimbledon.
Tooting Common, Clapham Common, and Brockwell Park came alive with enthusiastic runners and walkers in the spirit of celebrating the NHS as we joined our local parkruns for a takeover on 8 July 2023. We loved having the opportunity to speak to our local community about all the challenge events we have coming up and generally raising awareness about the incredible work of St George’s Hospital.
We got artistic…
Our Arts St George’s team played a huge role in the celebrations. Music has a way of bringing people together, and the St George's staff choir certainly did that. They performed a heartfelt song to honour the NHS and its remarkable journey over the past 75 years. The choir's captivating performance resonated with the audience, fostering a sense of unity and pride in the hospital's dedicated staff members.
The team also had the St George’s Post Bird share Happy Birthday messages across the Trust, Nicky Simpson from Textile Skills Centre invited staff to create their own NHS 75 badges and they asked staff to respond to creative prompts to inform the ‘Our National Health Stories’ Project that they are currently involved in.
Overall, we have managed to raise an amazing £1,932.60 and counting to support St George’s Hospital through all our celebrations! We are thrilled to have had this opportunity to bring together staff, patients, and the local community and cannot be more grateful for everyone getting involved, raising a cuppa, and celebrating the NHS with us!
