Pharma company makes €250,000 donation

Howard Lake | 1 January 2020 | News

Irish charity Barretstown, which offers free, specially designed camps and programmes for children and their families living with a serious illness, has received a donation of €250,000 from a pharmaceutical company.

Vertex Foundation, the charitable arm of US pharmaceutical company Vertex, provided the donation for a special seven-day siblings’ camp aimed at brothers and sisters of young patients currently being treated for, or recovering from, a serious illness. The gift to the Barretstown children’s charity is the first by the foundation in Ireland.

According to the Irish Times, Barretstown chief executive Dee Ahearn said sibling camps provide an incredible opportunity for up to 125 siblings to become the focus of attention, to come to camp and spend a week with other siblings going through the exact same journey as they are.

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“Siblings can often be forgotten about, yet themselves can struggle with feelings of guilt and incredible responsibility to put their own needs to one side given the fact their sibling is ill,” Ms Ahearn told the newspaper.

Vertex Foundation executive director Katharine Jensen praised Barretstown for its “incredibly impactful work supporting children and their loved ones”.

“One focus of the foundation is providing support to families with children living with serious diseases. Barretstown shares this focus and is remarkable,” said Ms Jensen, who is also head of corporate responsibility at Vertex Pharmaceuticals.

Vertex secured Health Service Executive approval for Orkambi in Ireland in 2017 after prolonged negotiations and a major lobbying campaign by patients and their families.

Results for 2018, the most recent available, show that Vertex’s Irish business made sales of €60 million in Ireland that year, most of it from Orkambi.

In 2018 Barretstown raised €6.4 million, €5.3 million of which came from voluntary sources. €1.5 million was raised from corporate donations and €2.4 million from individual donations.

Last year Barretstown won “Charity of the Year 2019” in the Charities Institute Ireland awards. Nominees were judged on transparency, purpose, strategy, evaluation and impact.

About Howard Lake
Howard Lake is consultant editor of UK Fundraising. He founded the site in 1994 and successfully sold it in 2022. As director of Giving X Ltd he is exploring growing giving on a massive scale. He is the founder of Fundraising Camp and co-founder of GoodJobs.