27th October 2005
Imagine Homes contribute to the £360,000 raised at Anthea & Grant Summer Ball
For the third successive year, Anthea and Grant’s Summer Ball, sponsored by the innovative, and rapidly growing property company Imagine Homes raised an impressive amount of £360,000 for its two well deserving charities, DebRA and CHASE. Two auctions, which lasted throughout the evening with prizes ranging from holidays in the Caribbean, a Marbella holiday in a private jet, and the generous donation from Imagine Homes of an apartment in London,caught the imagination of the guests, while testimonials and speeches from various parents and carers involved in the charities tore at their heart-strings.
“The evening was an outstanding success, our best yet, and we are so grateful to the huge generosity of our guests that we were able to exceed our target for the evening, as well as giving everyone a night to remember,” said Grant Bovey, who is also CEO of Imagine Homes.
“Anthea and I feel passionately about the plight of the children receiving help from DebRA and CHASE, and, together with our fantastic organizing committee and the support of our many friends, our Summer Ball is the least we can do to raise some of the vital funds needed to look after these children and their families.”
As the sun went down in Anthea and Grant’s stunning Surrey country home on July 9th, over 500 guests, including famous media names such as Noel Edmonds, Paul McKenna, Max Clifford, Claire Sweeney and Simon Cowell enjoyed flowing champagne, a delicious four course dinner and constant entertainment from the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, special guests Tony Christie and Keedie and master of ceremonies Bobby Davro.
CHASE supports life-limited children, young people and their families in Surrey, SW London and a large part of West Sussex. Life-limited children are those who are not expected to reach their 19th birthday. Their Community Care team is specially trained and offers practical and emotional support to the entire family in their own home and in the local community. The journey shared with CHASE can continue from diagnosis of the child’s life-limiting condition, through to bereavement and beyond.
CHASE has a children’s hospice – Christopher’s - near Guildford, which has nine bedrooms and is designed to provide a home-from-home environment. Today CHASE is supporting 204 families and the estimated number of families with a life-limited child in the area they cover is 780. It costs £2.7 million each year to run CHASE and with little or no statutory funding the majority of this must be raised through general donation.
DebRA receives no direct Government funding but relies on its own efforts and the help of generous benefactors to enable it to complete its work helping children with the rare and horrendous skin disorder, EB. EB is currently incurable, affecting children from birth. The “glue” keeping the skin together present in normal births is missing causing severe blistering either spontaneously or at the slightest friction. Even turning over in bed can, for an EB child, result in up to thirty or more blisters, which, unless lanced and dressed, will continue to spread.
For many sufferers this skin break down is not limited to the outer body surfaces alone. It also affects the inner body linings, making the eating of solids almost impossible and the disposal of body waste incredibly painful. In the UK, specialist NHS treatment facilities for EB at national and regional level are almost non-existent and the 5,000 or so UK families affected by the condition rely almost entirely on DebRA support.