The Ritherdon family hosted a Family Fun Day last September to fundraise for the local community. The chosen charity had to be a local one and a cause we all felt deeply about. We gathered everyone up and decided that this year, the company’s fundraising efforts were to be dedicated to our local East Lancashire Hospital Trust Charity, ELHT & Me.
All funds raised by ELHT & Me go to the local hospitals and benefits the residents of Blackburn with Darwen and East Lancashire directly.
The charity works to enhance the patient experience with better medical equipment and for the improvement of facilities, in areas that are outside of normal NHS provisions. This is a key aspect of the charity – plus they allowed Ritherdon to decide where we wanted the funding to be spent.
We decided that we wanted to support Blackburn Children’s Ward and the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit. Daniela Romano, Sales Manager for Ritherdon and coordinator of the event, commented:
‘As a company, Ritherdon wants to give back to the local community through our organisation of the Ritherdon Family Fun Day. The first and most important decision was to make sure that we were choosing the right local charity for us. When I spoke to ELHT & Me they let us know that we could choose which individual ward the funds would go to. We embraced the opportunity to help the children’s ward at Blackburn Hospital and also NICU. This gave us the chance to give back to a service that means a lot to me and the staff at Ritherdon’
Family Fun at Bold Venture Park
He held a great day out for the local community and the Ritherdon staff. We managed to get together, have fun and raised more than £600 for our chosen local charity ELHT and Me.
This year was our 2nd event and we held the Family Fun Day at the bottom field near Bold Venture Park in Darwen. We had lots going on for the day. Funfair rides, prize draws and raffles, stalls with local artisans and catering from Bolton’s finest, Carrs’ Pasties.
We invited the Darwen Fire Brigade so that we could learn about fire safety from the best. They were kind enough to bring along a real fire engine for everyone to see. We even had a go at trying on all the fire equipment! The firefighters showed us how fast they have to get ready in case of a fire. We decided that we would run a competition to see how we would measure up. Some of us were unexpectedly slowed down. Can’t see why that would be.
We enjoyed magic like never before and were absolutely gobsmacked with Magician Andrew Dean. He’s absolutely brilliant!
We got crafty with the help of our resident artist! Nicola conjured up clever metal tools to create intricate robot portraits. Using small tools found around the factory, Nic, fashioned some small hand tools to create all sorts of shaped stamps.
To tie everything up we enjoyed a brilliant performance from the Darwen Morris Dancers. Thanks for putting on a great show and joining us for the event once again.
It was a wonderful event and we’re grateful that we could organise it once again. A big thank you to everyone involved and a special thanks to Denise Gee and all ELHT & Me staff that came out to support us. Find out more about the wonderful job that ELHT & Me carry out for Blackburn and Darwen and East Lancashire.
We’re already looking forward to our next Family Fun Day!
