Rausings donate £2mn to UK disability charities
Melanie May | 26 July 2023 | News
Forty-one UK charities supporting people with disabilities have received a share of £2mn, donated by Julia and Hans Rausing.
The grants range from £4,000 to £440,000, and the charities receiving the funds include:
- National Star: A Gloucestershire based charity providing young disabled students education and personalised learning opportunities alongside transition and accommodation services. A £440,000 donation will be used towards its ‘Building a Brighter Future Project’, a new £6 million residence for students with complex disabilities in Gloucestershire.
- The Wingate Special Children’s Trust: The Cheshire based charity aims to allow those with SEND to be active, improve their health and mental wellbeing and to grow in confidence through its inclusive residential and sport & recreation facilities. The £195,000 donation will provide support with running costs over the next three years.
- Annie Mawson’s Sunbeams Music Trust: A £25,000 donation will support a number of its programmes, including ‘Music for Dignity’, which delivers weekly music sessions to physically disabled adults attending day centres, residential homes and at the Sunbeams Music Centre.
Julia and Hans Rausing commented:
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“We have always focused the majority of our Trust on supporting charities that widen opportunities and improve wellbeing and health outcomes. The 41 charities we have selected provide help for people who require significant assistance on a day-to-day basis.
“To meet the complex needs of people with disabilities requires highly skilled and compassionate individuals as well as state of the art equipment and facilities, which are becoming more expensive through the cost-of-living crisis. The charities we are funding are all doing essential work and we are pleased we have been able to help them in continuing to deliver their services.”
To date, the Julia and Hans Rausing Trust has provided over 1,000 grants totalling more than £330 million but does not generally accept unsolicited applications. Funding is given to organisations working within three main areas: health and wellbeing; welfare and education; and arts and culture.
More on major gifts: £1mn donation from philanthropist and entrepreneur Safwan Sobhan
Elsewhere this month, philanthropist and entrepreneur Safwan Sobhan gave a £1 million donation to help accelerate the diagnosis and treatment of people in the UK with a high risk of coronary heart disease.
Mr Safwan Sobhan, an industrialist and business entrepreneur in Bangladesh, made the donation to Imperial College London’s National Heart and Lung Foundation.
The donation will establish a five-year fellowship for postdoctoral research and support research on heart disease being led by Dr Ramzi Khamis, a fellow at the Institute and a consultant interventional cardiologist at Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust.
As well as contributing to core research costs, Mr Sobhan’s £1 million donation will establish a five-year fellowship for a postdoctoral researcher and fund a laboratory technician to support Dr Khamis and the fellow with experimental work.
Mr Sobhan said:
“Heart disease is still the leading cause of death worldwide, with tens of millions of people living with the condition. In the UK, someone dies from a heart attack or disease every eight minutes.
“Dr Khamis and his team are making discoveries that have the potential to benefit many thousands of people living with cardiovascular disease both in the UK and internationally. I am pleased to offer my support to this important work and to help provide opportunities for the next generation of cardiology researchers.”
Professor Clare Lloyd, Interim Head of the National Heart and Lung Institute, said:
“We are immensely grateful for this £1 million donation for heart disease research at the National Heart and Lung Institute, one of the world’s greatest concentrations of expertise in cardiovascular and respiratory science. Mr Sobhan’s remarkable contribution will enable major strides forward in Dr Khamis’s research on atherosclerosis, enabling us to develop better treatments and to identify those most at risk of serious complications.”
About Melanie May
Melanie May is a journalist and copywriter specialising in writing both for and about the charity and marketing services sectors since 2001. She can be reached via thepurplepim.com.