The AKU Society team and trustees hope you had a very Merry Christmas and wish you a safe and Happy New Year. In this week’s blog we look at our recent Christmas appeal and found out how it went.
Our recent Christmas appeal was dedicated to raising money for our newly launched online counselling service. This service was designed to combat the negative effect AKU has on people’s mental health but was also in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. To do this we are offering free online counselling sessions to all AKU patients based in the UK. Protecting and improving AKU patients’ mental health is as important to us as improving their physical health.
COVID-19 has changed they way we offer support to AKU patients. The National AKU Centre has been cancelled and uncertain since the start of lockdown last year and we have had to cancel and push back our popular face-to-face patient workshops. Isolation has been a major issue for our patients, especially considering the ultra-rare nature of AKU. The counselling service was designed to alleviate this and to work through the impact the disease has on AKU patients’ mental health.
Currently, we are trialling the service to see if patients find it beneficial. However, we want to make this an established service in the future. The money raised through our Christmas appeal will be instrumental in helping us achieve that.
Overall, we raised a fantastic £2,691, with donations coming in from all over the world. We would like to thank everyone who donated to the appeal and made it such a success.
If you would like to receive online counselling and are based in the UK, please head here to read about our new service and how you can receive support.
As part of our appeal, BreakUpBoxes kindly donated a huge self-care hamper. Each person who donated £5 or more to the appeal was automatically entered into a draw to win the hamper. Katerina Michael was the lucky winner this year. Congratulations! We hope the hamper makes the start of 2021 a little easier.
We have lots of exciting plans for this year. Make sure to keep checking our website and social media for news about our BBC 4 Radio Appeal which will be announced soon.
Would you like to fundraise for the AKU Society? Please email juliet@akusociety.org for more information on how to help us, along with ideas. You can continue to donate to the AKU Society by following this link.