The Benenden Healthcare Society
In 2012, the Benenden Healthcare Society will be giving large amounts of money to two valuable charities in the UK: actionforchildren.org.uk”>Action for Children which “supports and speaks out for the UK's most vulnerable and neglected children and young people, for as long as it takes to make a difference in their lives…” and Yorkshire Air Ambulance (an independent charity providing a life saving rapid response emergency service to 5 million people across Yorkshire).
It is hoping substantial monies will be raised for these two charities since in 2011, a new fundraising method was put in place which resulted in more than £3000 to be split amongst the two chosen charities of that year. The hope for 2012 is that even more money will be raised.
How Beneden Healthcare Works
Benenden Healthcare raises funds to provide “affordable mutual healthcare to employees of the public sector as well as their friends and family.” It is a complimentary service to the UK’s National Health Service that is totally overwhelmed by offering free healthcare to all UK citizens. When one therefore ends up needing additional care, Benenden Healthcare is the solution. The way it works is that employees are able to select the charities democratically – and these will be the ones which will benefit from the Society’s fundraising for this year. So why these two? What do they do? How are they helping UK citizens in the field of health? Let’s take a look.
Action for Children
Clearly, this worthy charitable endeavor has exerted extreme efforts to bring smiles to the faces of many kids. Just one recent example is the case of a 10-year-old sports fanatic who has been given the opportunity to walk out onto the Wembley football pitch next week. He will be escorting one of the football players – no doubt his hero – during the England Vs Holland game.
How did Action for Children arrange this? The young lads – 10-year-old Trey Jennings (who has undergone various obstacles with his family) and Luke Stevenson (who has Aspergers Syndrome) – had their names pulled out of a hat in a cool idea set up by the charity with the help of the FA and the Kirklees Family Intervention Project. It seems a lot of people want to help those who are less well-off than ourselves, and giving to kids in this way will sure render a lot of smiles when they get to do something they only dreamed about. Clearly, Action for Children makes a real difference in the life of vulnerable kids.
Yorkshire Air Ambulance
Moving over to the other chosen charity, this organization provides a crucial service to Yorkshire – ambulances – but cannot manage without huge cash injections since it relies on outside funds from the kindness of others to keep it in operation.
It’s bad enough that it doesn’t get adequate financing from the government for its venture, but recently, the organization has had to start a new battle with the authorities: to get a VAT rebate on all the fuel they use. Thankfully one resident, Ken Sharpe, is on the case and has to date, collected close to 4,000 signatures for his e-petition against this. In all fairness though to the British government, it doesn’t have all that much control over this since it is being bamboozled by EU legislation which doesn’t give individual countries under its auspices the power to extend VAT zero rates to any kind of charitable organizations. But now enough noise has been made and in the Houses of Parliament, one active MP, Mr. Bayley tabled an Early Day Motion to get grants to over the fuel VAT. Not surprisingly, from all parties the motion won huge amounts of support, crossing party lines. As he said, “I hope the Chancellor will agree to return the VAT which Yorkshire Air Ambulance pays, so that the service receives the same benefit as the lifeboat service.”
At least if this goes through then Yorkshire Air Ambulance will be able to use the funds it will be receiving from Benenden Healthcare for other expenses, rather than wasting it on bills it shouldn’t need to be paying.
