Home Comforts Furniture Warehouse celebrated their launch earlier this month by fundraising for the Noah’s Ark Appeal.

The furniture warehouse, based in Cowbridge, enjoyed a well attended launch, supported by guests of honour, Welsh Lions JPR Williams and Sam Warburton.

A raffle held on the night raised over £100, and Home Comforts continues to collect for the Noah’s Ark Appeal in store. Nicky and Gareth Punter, owners, said, “We’re thrilled to be able to help such a great cause.”

Noah’s Ark Appeal Chairman Lyn attended the launch and said: “We look forward to working with Home Comforts in the future – we think they’ll have a lot to bring to the table!”

John Homewood

Everyone at the Noah’s Ark Appeal would like to extend our sincere condolences to the family and friends of John Homewood; beloved volunteer with the appeal for over ten years. He will be sadly missed.

John took on a number of volunteer roles throughout his years with the appeal but will perhaps be remembered most for his fantastic work at our shop in the foyer of the Children’s Hospital forWales.

With such a small number of staff, volunteers are important to the successful running of the Noah’s Ark Appeal and John became a firm favourite among the team.

Emilia Fox with Beauty

The Noah’s Ark Appeal is to receive £171,000 from the first ever ITV Text Santa appeal, which raised more than £4million for charities across the UK.

The money raised has already made a huge difference at Christmas in the Children’s Hospital for Wales, and will continue to benefit children in Wales for years to come.

With a pre-Christmas donation from Text Santa, the Noah’s Ark Appeal organised a special seasonal Beauty and the Beast pantomime to give the patients and staff at the Children’s Hospital for Wales an early Christmas treat.

It was a particularly special day for Emilia Fox, four, from Barry who met up with Beauty following the show. The pair were soon inseparable and are now ‘the bestest of friends!’ Those children who were too unwell to watch the show received a special visit to their bedside from the cast after the show.

The remainder of the donation will be split evenly between our campaigns to fund a hydrotherapy pool and equip a new critical care unit in Phase Two of the Children’s Hospital for Wales. Both are incredibly important and will have a huge impact on the children who need specialist treatment for years to come. The hydrotherapy pool and the critical care unit are two projects to be funded by the our £7million commitment for Phase Two.

Lyn Jones, Chairman of the Noah’s Ark Appeal said; ‘The Noah’s Ark Appeal was thrilled to be chosen as a charity to benefit from Text Santa. It was a very important appeal for us that has raised a fantastic amount towards our fundraising efforts.

As a Welsh based charity, having the opportunity for UK wide exposure is very rare and we are most grateful for the chance to be seen by new and wider audiences.

I’d like to take this opportunity to thank everyone who has supported Text Santa and who in turn have made a significant difference to the lives of many sick children throughout Wales.’

Adrian Coles preparing for his challenge

Adrian Coles, of Whitchurch, Cardiff, is taking part in a London to Paris cycle challenge to raise funds for the Noah’s Ark Appeal.

Adrian, who has recently become a father to young daughter Lucie, says he had been thinking about which charity to support for some time. He decided upon the Noah’s Ark Appeal because “the hospital is local to Cardiff and means a lot to the people in Wales. I’m hoping that everyone I ask for sponsorship, wherever they’re from, will dig deep, because anyone who has children could potentially need the Children’s Hospital one day.”

Adrian’s challenging cycle journey will see him traversing over 470 kilometres over four days. The specially prepared route is filled with low valleys and strenuous hill climbs. Adrian is hoping that the snow will hold off from now until the Spring so he can get plenty of training in!

He hopes to raise over £2000 by the time he cycles across the channel in May. Funds raised will be used to help equip the new critical care unit planned for Phase Two of the Children’s Hospital for Wales.

Please sponsor enthusiastic Adrian as he trains! You can find his JustGiving page here.

And you can keep up with him on twitter @colesy58.

Ooh la la!

Find out about all of our challenge events here.

Come join the Noah’s Ark Appeal team for the British Military Fitness, St David’s Day Run which will this year take place in Bute Park Cardiff on the 4th March.  The Run has three disciplines a 5k, 10k and a family 1.5k.

The Noah’s Ark Appeal is putting together a team of runners in both the 5k and 10k and we would be delighted if you would like to run for us.

There is a small entry fee of £8 for the 5K race and £14 for the 10K payable to the Noah’s Ark Appeal, we will book your place as part of our team! We will be able to provide you with a t-shirt to run in on the day and sponsorship forms to raise those funds for the appeal.

If you are interested we would love to hear from you and have you as part of our team!

While most people are unhappy that Christmas is over, we at the Noah’s Ark Appeal love this time of year!

It’s in January that we get to hear all about your Christmas celebrations when you kindly send in donations from collections at Carol Services, Nativity Plays, Coffee Mornings, as well as money sent in lieu of Christmas Cards.

Unfortunately this would be a very long story if we named every individual, group, church, school or family but we would like to take this chance to say a huge THANK YOU!

Your donations mean so much to us at Christmas and your support will help us to ensure that the Children’s Hospital for Wales will be a world-class facility, providing the very best of care for generations of sick children in Wales.

Dame Shirley Bassey

As we celebrate our wonderful Patron Dame Shirley Bassey’s 75th Birthday we remind you that we believe that Cardiff’s favourite daughter, the legendary Dame Shirley Bassey should be awarded the Freedom of Cardiff.

We are petitioning Cardiff County Council to honour Dame Shirley for being a great Ambassador for the City. She has brought world wide attention to our Capital and has been very active in supporting the Children’s Hospital for Wales, based in Cardiff. We hope that you will show your support for Dame Shirley by writing a letter or sending an e-mail to us so that we can pass it on to the decision-makers.

freedom@noahs-ark-appeal.org

Or write to us at: The Noah’s Ark Appeal, CRI, Newport Road, Cardiff, CF24 0SZ

Lynne Sheehy, PR Manager (right) with staff member Claire (left)

Legal and General’s Cardiff branches raised £1700 for The Noah’s Ark Appeal Christmas Stocking Appeal this year.

Staff at the Brunel House and Knox Court offices held a festive dress down day and collected £700. Legal and General generously matched it, and donated an extra £300, totaling an wonderful £1700!

Lynne Sheehy, PR manager at the Knox Court offices, said of the fundraising: “We are delighted to once again support The Noah’s Ark Appeal. We have a long and happy relationship with them and I am pleased to say that, of all the applications we received, our employees chose Noah’s Ark Appeal this Christmas.”

Tesco employees Gareth and Sue

Every little certainly helped this Christmas when Tesco House in Cardiff raised money for our Christmas Stocking Appeal.

Employee Gareth Price, whose daughter Ruby was treated at the Children’s Hospital for Wales, organized a fundraising day at Tesco House, including a cake and biscuit sale and a raffle.

Enthusiastic Gareth helped the staff to raise a fantastic £406 for the Christmas Stocking Appeal.

Gareth said of the day “I’m happy it went so well and we could fundraise for this great cause.”

The Noah’s Ark Appeal would like to say a big thank you to Tesco – who helped much more than a little!

John Wickens (Charity Chairman and Vice President of Foresters) Eddie Hayward (Vice President of the Noah's Ark Appeal) and Pamela Lewis (Branch President and PRO of Foresters)

For another year the Foresters Gwent Branch 214 has supported the Noah’s Ark Charity and has donated an amazing £2,100 towards Phase Two.

At four weekends during 2011 a committed number of Forester Members had a shift system and collected at the First Services, Magor for the Children’s Hospital for Wales. The cheque was presented to Mr Eddie Hayward, Vice Chairman of the Noah’s Ark Appeal at a luncheon held at ‘y Cantref’, Abergavenny on Sunday, 27 November 2011. In addition to this the foresters have been great volunteers for our charity throughout 2011, notably six members of the Foresters helped out by bucket collecting at the Glanusk International Polo match between Wales and Ireland in July.