WELCOME TO OUR FRIENDS OF HIGHGROUND NEWSLETTER!
 



LIFE BEYOND THE MILITARY – OUTDOORS

WELCOME TO OUR WINTER NEWSLETTER

 

Welcome to our first Newsletter of 2020. The start of the new decade means a new chapter for all of us and at HighGround we’ve got so much to get stuck into. Our land- based employment service moves to a new level when Jemma and Tim join us and later in the year we will be rolling out the Rural Weeks programme to a new agricultural college as well as Bicton. Lots of gardening at Stanford Hall and Jon and Sue to drive the Development Board and Friends forwards – hang on tight!!

Anna BC
Founder and Executive Director

Anna

FRIENDS OF HIGHGROUND

FHG is the voluntary arm of HighGround which supports and promotes the work of the Charity through Fundraising and community awareness initiatives, both locally and nationally.

In October we were delighted to welcome Sue van Leest to the Board of Trustees and she has generously agreed to represent the Friends on HighGround’s Board. We thank Jon Chandler for his help in getting us started, and it’s great to welcome Sue who has stacks of fundraising experience, and knows the military charity sector well.

Whilst the majority of our fundraising still comes from grant-making trusts and foundations, by starting the Friends of HighGround our aim is to diversify our funding sources to include more corporate and personal donations.

To that end, we have drawn up a Wishlist which we update quarterly. Each item on the Wishlist is currently unfunded, and we hope this will inspire you, our Friends and supporters, to help us raise the funds for all these essential items – we run a pretty tight ship...

Sue has been working with the Steering Group to produce a Calendar of Events and we have decided to split the UK into regions (a big step forward..!) and we are actively seeking Regional Champions who will co- ordinate events. Watch this space!

We have welcomed more than 20 new Friends since our last Newsletter and we thank Brian Moore our Steering Group member very much for organising a pub quiz in Ipswich where they raised £288 and have already been invited back.

There is now a dedicated Friends of the Tenth area on our website where you can catch up with what Andy and Jane are doing. It was a great honour to be present at the first Remembrance Sunday at the memorial and going forwards, the focus of FOTT’s work will be education.

Friends of HighGround exists to raise money and awareness, and we now have some flyers for distribution at our events. If you would like to help us by distributing some, please contact Anna and she will send you some so you can help to spread the word.

BECOME A FRIEND OF HIGHGROUND
Remembrance Sunday at FOTT memorial 10th November 2019Remembrance Sunday at FOTT memorial 10th November 2019 with Padre Brian and Vic Gregg age 100, one of the last surviving veterans of Operation Market Garden.

RURAL WEEKS

Our Winter Rural Weeks programme at Bicton College finished in December and we start again in March 2020 when the days are getting longer. We delivered 8 Rural Weeks in 2019 and a huge thank you to all our funders, speakers, presenters who made the programme possible, and to Bicton for looking after us so well.

This quote from one of our HighGrounders sums it up for me: Despite my ups & downs over the last 12 months I can say that attending the Rural Week has given me some positive direction to begin to follow and regain my footing in an unfamiliar environment.

Steve Ensell’s Introduction to the Landscape industry presentation at Bicton. Steve Ensell’s Introduction to the Landscape industry presentation at Bicton.
Jemma Jones join us for our December Rural Week Jemma Jones join us for our December Rural Week.

Thanks to funding from the Armed Forces Covenant Trust, we will be running two Rural Experience Weeks during our 2020 programme at Bicton for veterans who are a bit further away from employment than our Rural Weeks attendees. You can read reports from all our Rural Weeks here and we are all looking forward to starting work with Askham Bryan College later in 2020 as we seek to expand our Rural Weeks programme to deliver more Life beyond the military – outdoors.

READ MORE
Anna with Tim Whittaker Principal at Askham Bryan College. Anna with Tim Whittaker Principal at Askham Bryan College.

STANFORD HALL

We were delighted to welcome the new Commanding Officer Captain Hofman to the greenhouse when she visited to make a Christmas wreath, and it was also great to welcome Michelle from Norton House where the relatives of DMRC Stanford Hall patients stay when they are visiting their loved ones. Lots to do in 2020 as we continue to develop and improve our service.

The Stanford Hall Horticultural Therapy Challenge to raise the next 3 years’ funding for our service has begun in earnest; we need to raise £361,504. You can follow our progress here.

A huge thank you to all our wonderful Gardening Volunteers who have helped Andy and Jane to keep the therapeutic environments where Jane delivers Horticultural Therapy up to scratch – it has been a very busy year and now that Full Operational Capacity has been reached, we are sure that the late Duke of Westminster would be very proud of his magnificent legacy.

Captain Alison Hofman RN. DMRC Stanford Hall Commanding Officer. Wreathmaking in the greenhouse. Captain Alison Hofman RN. DMRC Stanford Hall Commanding Officer. Wreathmaking in the greenhouse.
We are delighted to be working with JustSeats®. Donation of pruning tools from Darlac.

Chris Eberhardie, a member of the Friends Steering Group writes: On a wet and windy day in late October, Dr Henry Oakeley author and creator of the Royal College of Physicians (RCP) medicinal garden, Dr Noel Snell RCP Garden Fellow, Nell Jones Head Gardener from the Chelsea Physic Garden and I had the pleasure of visiting the HighGround horticultural team at DMRC Stanford Hall.

My last visit was in October 2018 when all there was to see was an unfinished greenhouse and a summer house with the outline of the raised beds which were to be built near the greenhouse. The progress that has been made by our small team in one year is inspirational.

The CO with Andy and the RSM on her farewell round.Dr Henry Oakeley’s visit with Noel Snell, Andy and Jane.

The greenhouse is up and running with chillies growing well. The raised beds by the greenhouse are completed and flourishing. The walled garden with the six large raised beds was beautiful. The Apothecaries bed was full of interesting plants and the other beds brought more colour with annuals and perennials. Even the Neuro garden was established. An amazing achievement for just two people and I left the site re-energised and even more determined to raise funds to continue this very important work.

READ MORE

HORSEFERRY ROAD

As well as welcoming Sue to the Board of Trustees, we are delighted that Alex Hoppenbrouwers and Jon Perkins have also agreed to join us. You can read about them here and our Chairman’s Christmas message is here.

FUNDRAISING

Huge congratulations to Tim who joined us for a Alex is going to be helping us to develop our corporate fundraising strategy and we are delighted to be working with JustSeats® who have created a unique marketplace where unused sport, music and theatre tickets are sold to raise money for charity. If you would like to get involved by running or supporting a fundraising event, do please get in touch and we hope that 2020 will see the Friends achieve their target of raising 10% of HighGround’s budget – no pressure..!

DONATE HERE
Tim on one of HighGround’s recent Rural Weeks. We are delighted to be working with JustSeats®

PROFILE: JON PERKINS

Our Autumn Rural Weeks programme at Bicton Everyone at Team HighGround does something different, and each quarter we like to introduce you to another member of the Team so you can read about what they do, and why they do it. Jon recently joined the Board of Trustees to act as the link between the Trustees and the Development Board. Many thanks to Nicole for interviewing him.

READ JON’S STORY HERE
JON PERKINS picture

GOOD NEWS

We salute all our HighGrounders as they move forwards and into land-based employment and you can read some of their stories here.

READ MORE

GDPR AND OUR STANDARDS

GDPR came into effect on 25th May 2018. We had an extremely busy run up to this date, but our small team were able to pull out all the stops and get things in place in time. As a charity we take GDPR and the security of your information very seriously. To this end, we have ensured that all of our data processors comply rigorously to keep everything secure. You can read about our Standards here.

Thank you for reading and please do share this email with anybody you think may be interested in supporting HighGround or who may be in need of our support.

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Armed forces COVENANT

Funded by the Armed Forces Covenant with funding from the Covenant Fund.
We are proud to be a member of Cobseo and supported by The Royal Foundation.

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