Charity saved by community
The Rainbow Centre in Fareham has exceeded its £100,000 fundraising to ensure it can continue to provide life-changing services for children with Cerebral Palsy and adults with Parkinson’s, Multiple Sclerosis or recovering from a stroke.
This included one donation of £30,000 from a family and another single donation of £15,000. The rest was made up of amazing fundraising activities, donations, and corporate support for the centre.
A crisis appeal was launched after community donations to The Rainbow Centre fell by 30 per cent in the last financial year.
It costs almost £750,000 per year to run The Rainbow Centre and it gets no official funding from the government for its services. Everything it spends has to be raised from donations, trusts, bequests and corporate gifts.
The Rainbow Centre uses conductive education to help children with cerebral palsy and other neurological conditions, and adults with Parkinson’s, multiple sclerosis or recovering from a stroke.
The founder of The Rainbow Centre, Helen Somerset-How, said: “We are all totally astounded by the support the centre has been given by our local community and others from far and wide — we even had a sponsored bike ride held in Australia! Reaching our appeal target means that we move into the next financial year able to continue to provide the services which change the life of our participants and their families. However, our fundraising is an ongoing task as the majority of our funding comes from donations. Therefore we urge all our supporters to continue with their amazing fundraising activities.”
