The HOPE Foundation awards £28,000 in grants

16 Dec 2021

The College’s HOPE Foundation supports charitable initiatives that improve access to healthcare for disadvantaged groups. This year, the foundation has awarded a total of £28,000 in grants to projects that will offer vital support and access to healthcare on a local, national and international level.

Mrs Alison Lannigan, HOPE Foundation Chair said:
“This year we received many grant applications and I have been humbled by the work carried out by the applicants. We are delighted that our Foundation is able to support these organisations which will provide vital access to healthcare and support for so many in Glasgow, Scotland, Zambia, Tanzania and Jamaica. For the first time the HOPE Foundation has awarded a joint grant with the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh to establish the first dedicated paediatric surgery unit in South Sudan.”

We are deeply grateful to the College community for their generous donations that have enabled the HOPE Foundation to award grants to the following projects:

Playlist for Life: Training for professionals – improving online learning modules for Health and Social Care staff
A Scottish music and dementia charity operating throughout the UK, founded in 2013 by broadcaster and dementia carer, Sally Magnusson. They provide vital support for people living with a frightening and isolating disease by using personally meaningful music to improve quality of life.

CBU dental community outreach to the vulnerable communities of Zambia
Promote and improve the oral health and general wellbeing of the vulnerable population in Zambia. Reduce occurrence of oral diseases and covid transmission through oral health education and hand washing, reduce morbidity from preventable dental diseases and reduce the burden of dental disease to the community.

Finding Your Feet’s wellbeing programme for Scottish amputees
Finding Your Feet is based in Paisley; they provide lifeline support to amputees and those born with limb absence throughout Scotland. Their aim is to be the leading national charity supporting amputees and those with limb absence of all ages from a diverse range of backgrounds. They provide emotional, physical, and social support to enable engagement with wider society; reduce social isolation; and promote economic and physical independence.

Healing for the heart counselling and medical training at Overnight Welcome Centre
Glasgow City Mission offer holistic care to some of the most vulnerable people in Glasgow. This funding will enable them to have professional counsellors Healing for the Heart (HftH) attend the OWC this winter, and for medical-related training. They would like HftH to attend twice a week for two hour sessions. Many of their OWC guests have very poor mental health but have never received any mental health provision, so this can be the first time they’ve met a qualified counsellor.

Hope for Girls and Women Tanzania: Production and distribution of reusable sanitary towels for girls and women in northern Tanzania
This project will empower girls and women to maintain menstrual hygiene and dignity through producing their own supplies of washable, reusable sanitary towels. This increases girls’ school attendance, which improves their overall life chances. The World Bank states that for every year a girl stays in school her future income increases by 10-20%.

Transplant Links: Living-Donor kidney transplant programme, Jamaica
Transplant Links Community provides long-term training and support to surgeons, doctors and nurses of nascent transplant units in low- and middle-income countries, with the aim of developing sustainable, ethical living-donor kidney transplant programmes. Kidney failure is a huge problem in LMICs, where dialysis is currently the only treatment option (unaffordable for most, sometimes completely unavailable, offers short and poor quality of life). Living-donor renal transplant, where a healthy relative donates a kidney, is globally recognised as the best treatment for kidney failure (patients return to ‘normal life’, financially cheaper in the long term) and is commonplace in developed countries.

Kids Operating Room: Paediatric surgeon scholarship programme, South Sudan
Kids Operating Room is a global health charity focused entirely on the provision of high quality, safe surgical services for children in low- and middle-income countries. From centres in Edinburgh, Dundee and Nairobi, we provide surgeons and their teams with the infrastructure needed to transform the care available for their nation’s children. As part of their Africa30 strategy, KidsOR will train South Sudan’s first paediatric surgeon as part of a longer-term plan to train four paediatric surgeons in the country. All four surgeons will be trained at Baylor College of Medicine in Lilongwe, Malawi under Dr. Bip Nandi, before returning to work at the first dedicated OR for children, within Al Saba Children’s Hospital, Juba.
This project is jointly funded by the HOPE Foundation and the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh

Category: College