MASH - Medical Aid Sacred Heart

Medical Aid can be ...

Equipment, emergency relief, education, training, immunisation, counselling, preventative health care, nursing.

Our Mission ...

To raise money to buy essential supplies
To increase awareness of our work to provide life-saving medical equipment to those who don't hit the headlines
To canvas support from the local business community
To ask for help from local doctors, hospitals, pharmacists, pharmaceutical companies

Who have we helped?

When ordinary people get together, extraordinary things can happen! To date we have raised over £1 million. These are some of the places we have been able to provide medical aid:

Poland - providing a ventilator and heart monitor for children.
Bosnia and Herzegovina - working with the impoverished, elderly and destitute, providing doctors and community carers, educating orphans and and instigating water supply projects.
Bethlehem - caring for families in need, trapped in the conflict.
Zimbabwe - providing medical aid to the Murambinda Hospital.
Chernobyl - sending sterilising equipment to child cancer sufferers.
Sunderland - giving a special bed for David.
Kenya - building an AIDS hospice, school and orphanage.
Newcastle - supporting the Little Sisters of the Poor in their work with the elderly.
India - working with Sr Mary John caring for blind children and self-help health care programmes at the Leprosy Centre.
South Africa - providing medicine to refugees and street children, and life-saving vaccines to HIV+ babies in Soweto.
Rwanda - helping innocent child victims of the conflict through a local couple working abroad and a counsellor of victims of gun-related crime.
In Kosovo - we supported a medical centre in the mountains and the Children's Hospital in Pristina.

Who are we?

MASH is made up of local people in Newcastle from all walks of life, including the medical professions, who first got together in 1992 to raise money to send essential equipment and much-needed medicines to charities working with those in most need at home and abroad, regardless of race or religion.

Where does our funding come from?

Because we work in partnership with communities with whom we have personal contact, every penny we raise goes directly to those who need it. We raise funds by canvassing local businesses and organising FUNdraising events, we have an exciting annual programme including:

ceilidhs,
theme nights,
auctions,
quizzes,
tombolas,
golf tournament ...

and much more, to keep funds coming in, to keep our profile up and to encourage people to get involved.

MASH in the future

We want to maintain the momentum and so much more could be done to make our world a more hopeful place.

On Tyneside - we are working with the People's Kitchen and St. Dominic's offering a ray of hope to the homeless, helping them face the future with confidence.
In London - we are working with Sr. Mary Hickey providing mobile clinics to the homeless and mentally ill through the Cardinal Hume Project.
In Bosnia - we are helping to equip a home for the impoverished and destitute elderly, a home that MASH helped to build.
In Kenya - we are trying to increase child sponsorship.

We can only help if you do!

What can you do?

For more information, a newsletter and how to get involved, please email us at medicalaidsacredheart@blueyonder.co.uk

We are grateful to everyone who has already brought hope to the lives of so many people in so many different ways:

Organising and supporting fundraising events;
Leaving money in their will;
Sponsoring a street-child in our sister parish in Kitale;
Donating medical supplies and equipment;
Making a regular Gift Aid contribution;
Volunteering ideas;
Alerting us to projects we can help;
Raising awareness about MASH by talking to friends and work colleagues about MASH.

Together we can make it happen

We are often asked to help with special projects and, although we are only a small charity, we will do our best to help where we can. Please let us know about those in need, wherever they are.

Any help, ideas and contributions you can offer, however small, will make a BIG difference.

Whatever you decide to do. THANK YOU!

President: Fr. Jim Dunne
Chairman: Gerry O'Hanlon
Friends: Shay Given, Jonathan Edwards, Steve Donald, Sir Norman Wisdom
Patrons: RC Bishop of Hexham and Newcastle, CE Bishop of Newcastle, Chairman Newcastle Methodist District, URC Moderator Northern Province, Divisional Commander Salvation Army (Northern)

Parish Charity Number: 235686 (Medical Aid is part of the work of the Parish of the Sacred Heart in the area of Justice and Peace).