Micro-donations help brighten up Birmingham’s children’s hospital

Have you visited one of The Entertainer stores over the past few months? Do you remember seeing the option to round up your purchase and donate the change to charity?

If you’re a customer who chose to send your pennies to the four children’s hospitals supported by The Entertainer, you helped Birmingham Children’s Hospital get closer to their target of £900,000 for the cost of an urgent redesign of their emergency department.

This department of the hospital can be described as a ‘Cinderella’ area; its worn-out conditions are in need of a pick me up. The expert medical teams deliver fantastic services every day but have to work around dark and cramped waiting rooms and an inefficient layout to treat everything from broken toes to seriously ill children.

With the support from you and your pennies, the demoralising décor and the awkward space is closer to getting a new look, brightening up the experiences of patients and offering comfort for their families at what can be a stressful and frightening time.

Top of the wish list for families and doctors is moving the nurses’ station to the middle of the department and a parent’s room suitable for talking privately, getting some peace and sometimes, tragically, to receive bad news.

But it will take more than a glass slipper to effect these changes. To reach its target, the appeal has £600,000 left to raise. £16,000 of this will go towards the parent’s room and over £100,000 is needed to increase their minor injuries cubicles from 7 to 10.

And The Entertainer customers have been making real difference to reaching these targets. So far, in just 7 months, over £100,000 has been raised by people making that quick decision to say yes and round up their purchases. Birmingham Children’s Hospital is one of four children’s hospitals benefiting from that money, with more than £20,000 being raised for the Midlands hospital.

The hospital, their patients and everyone here at Pennies is grateful that people are enthusiastically joining in the scheme and we hope you enjoy seeing where your donations are having an impact.