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 mash@gohanlon.freeserve.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!
Founder President: Fr Tom Cass RIP
President: Fr. Jim Dunne
Chairman: Gerry O'Hanlon
Friends: Shay Given, Jonathan Edwards, Steve Donald RIP,
Sir Norman Wisdom
Patrons: Bishop Seamus Cunningham, RC Bishop of Hexham
and Newcastle
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).
