Today, The Countess of Wessex has paid a return visit to one of Shooting Star Chase's hospices - Christopher’s, which HRH officially opened in 2002 and afterwards agreed to become Shooting Star Chase Royal Patron.
My post on HRH's Patronage can be found here. To this day, The Countess continues to support Shooting Star Chase with regular visits to both hospices and hosting major fundraising events. 2016 marks 15th birthday of Christopher's Children Hospice as the place was opened in 2001.
During her visit, Sophie had the opportunity to meet some of the children and young people who are being cared for at Christopher's Hospice in Guildford. The Countess decorated biscuits and cakes with children and cut one for Christopher's 15th birthday.
Afterwards, 21-year-old Sian said: “The Countess of Wessex was amazing – she was so down to earth. I sat next to her when we were decorating tiaras to put on top of the cakes and she joked she was making a new crown for the Queen! I’ve been at Christopher’s for 14 years and I just love coming here. It’s one of my favourite places.”
courtesy of Emily Nash; Royal Correspondent at HELLO.
Sophie met 8 year old Miles, who got an impromptu camera lesson with photographer Max Mumby - Max often brings us plenty of lovely pictures of HRH, like today! HRH actually borrowed photographer’s camera for Miles. Click here to view Max's photographic coverage of the event.
The Countess of Wessex displayed her artistic skills designing her own member of The Friendlies - a group of award-winning, lively fingerprint characters designed to help break down the misconception that children’s hospices are sad and depressing places.
Sophie also met 6 year old Summer Palcynski, who presented royal with flowers. After the meeting, Summer said: “She was like Elsa, beautiful and with blonde hair. I gave her the flowers and she said she really liked them. And she told me I was good at cake decorating.”
Before cutting a specially-made 15th birthday cake, The Countess said: “Today is about celebrating 15 wonderful years of an incredible service to the community and the many families who greatly need the help that it gives. It has been my pleasure to have been involved with this organisation for 15 years. These visits can often be brief so I’m very grateful for the opportunity to spend time with the children today, it has been a great pleasure for me. Thank you to the children for all the help in the cake decorating, it was very artistic. Thank you also to everyone who works so incredibly hard to keep this place going, both here at Christopher’s and out in the community. Every penny counts so we need to do everything we possibly can to help Shooting Star Chase continue its really important work.” For more quotes and great insight info on HRH's visit, check Shooting Star Chase's website.
I was also very happy to see Hello's Royal Correspondent - Emily Nash, who will write a full feature on this visit for next week's issue of the magazine. For now, online coverage can be found here.
Since there is still some time left untill 14th February, I would also like to mention fabulous Valentine’s Day cards which are being sold at Shooting Star Chase, to raise vital funds. Those were inspired by children cared for by Shooting Star Chase, and their hilarious and heart-warming views on love. More info here.
courtesy of Shooting Star Chase Hospice via Twitter feed; click on pic to be redirected if you want to buy one of the cards.
While searching for more info regarding Christpher's Hospice, I came across this great article at Surrey Life, that explains in great detail how it all begun. "CHASE was started as an idea of a motivated lady called Julia Lever who lives in South West London," says Bridget Turner. "She read a newspaper article in one of the national papers about a little girl called Hope, who had a terrible condition and was going to die. Hope was going to be supported by a children's hospice in Birmingham, so this lady started, with a few friends, to raise a bit of money for them.
Suddenly, one day, a spark came and she said to herself, 'why am I sending the money up to Birmingham when there is nothing in the South East to support children like Hope?' "So in 1995, she sat around her coffee table and spoke to a group of close friends and they started to fundraise. That's how CHASE was born, and this lady became our founder trustee."
"Sarah More-Molyneux, who lives with her husband Michael More-Molyneux at the historic Loseley House in Guildford, was a friend of Julia Lever and wanted to be part of this fundraising initiative," says Bridget. "The family decided to go to their family trust and gave us this two-acre site, which would have cost us millions."
More from the article: But then after such generosity, tragedy struck. The More-Molyneux's third child, Christopher, tragically died in a quad bike accident on the family estate. Christopher had taken a great interest in the building and loved looking at the plans, and so they decided to name it after him. "The reason why it is not called St Christopher's, or Christopher House, is that we were very keen right from the beginning that we wouldn't embarrass any children," says Bridget. "Allowing them the opportunity to just say, 'I'm going to Christopher's', as if they are just visiting a friend, saves them from the awkward questions." For full article visit this link. It's really worth reading.
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