By Sophia Cuevas

In the south district lives a peaceful paradise for those at any stage of their cancer diagnosis as well as any loved ones who are struggling and need some support. With fantastic facilities, like tranquil therapy rooms, beautiful gardens and playrooms, the Cancer Relief Centre is a valuable resource for its service users. In addition, there are many things to offer, like aromatherapy and wig fittings, alongside kind workers ready to lend a helping hand and do their absolute best for the service users.

We spoke to the charity’s fundraising manager Rowena Wallace and volunteer and Eilidh Latin about the charity, fundraising and how the Covid pandemic affected their operations.

What fundraising events have you done recently? How much money did you raise?

Eilidh Latin: Our most recent one was pancake day. We organized it ourselves. Unfortunately, we could not do it in the venue we were initially planning to do it in, due to staff and logistic issues, we engaged with all our supporters with restaurants, with corporations, all the companies, and each place had their own pancake day. We raised just under £5,000. We had lots of community involvement; we spent the day visiting everybody who was fundraising.

What events are being planned? What are the fundraising goals?

Latin: One of the other main events that we are hoping to go ahead in September will be our coffee morning. We have not been able to have that for a few years due to Covid. Our main goal is to be able to engage with the community as we did pre-Covid. We missed that involvement; we missed seeing our service users enjoying an event we planned.

On the fundraising side, obviously, we want to raise as much as possible, but we want to get back to that community and spend some time with the service users, new and old, and they’ll come visit us there, and we can enjoy a day together. That’s what we miss the most.

Rowena Wallace: Also, it’s good for publicity, so it’s great to be able to get the name of the charity out there again, it’s a good opportunity for people who are unsure if the charity is for them, it’s a good opportunity for them to come meet us and talk to us and realize that we aren’t that scary.

How long have you been in this establishment? How are the facilities?

Eilidh Latin: I've been here 6 years, but the centre itself has been here for quite a few years.

Rowena Wallace: The charity itself was founded in 1985 and we moved up to this building in 2013 and we’ve been here since then. We’ve grown massively since then.

The building is much bigger, it was built for us to be able to use it for our purpose, it’s beautiful and it’s allowed us to really expand our service to more people.

What inspired you to take this job?

Eilidh Latin: For me, it was when I moved here, I did my research on various charities, I've had previous experience, I was a nurse and I volunteered in Scotland, so it felt natural to come here, there was no doubt that I wanted to do this, and it suited me perfectly.

What is your favourite part of this job?

Eilidh Latin: For me it’s volunteering, if I could do more hours I would. I really enjoy working in a team, everyone here is amazing. Everyone I work with is genuinely lovely and our entire goal for everyone here is for the service users and that is a genuine thing. Knowing that I'm making a difference, if there’s ways I can help, any ways we can fundraise better, all the better for the community. I just really enjoy coming up here because I'm part of a team, it’s doing something purposeful.

Rowena Wallace: For me it’s the same. It’s feeling like we’re doing something for the community, feeling that it’s practical help as well as support and being part of the community. It’s very fulfilling.

How did the pandemic affect services? Are they back to normal?

Eilidh Latin: There was no public fundraising, no massive fundraising events, so we had to kind of rethink things, it gave us time to sit down and think what are we able to do long term. It involved a lot more engagement with corporations; it involved a lot more planning, how can we change our fundraising strategy. We engaged with our corporations, we thought of new ways to fundraise.

However, speaking on the basis of individuals, we were still doing fundraising, with the limits of Covid restrictions, and we did extremely well. We raised quite a bit during Covid, we had a lot of support from the public, because a lot of people realized that our donations would go down, the community got on board and continued to support us. They stayed in touch with us and did fundraisers at home and we did okay.

On our one-to-one level, we could not do our day support, we had the staff here liaising with all the service users, sometimes on a daily basis, we always checked in on the service users, they were never left alone, there was always communication with them. Within the restrictions, the nurses could visit at a distance and there were ways we could work round it that maintained our safety and our service users’ safety.

It did have an impact, and the Centre became very empty very quickly. We moved the chemotherapy unit from the GHA to here, so it was actually very good to support the GHA in that way and it enabled people to get to know us. It just changed things for everyone, some things for the better, a lot of our older volunteers were two years out - they decided then that they were no longer going to volunteer. They took some time to think, okay now’s my time to relax and enjoy life a bit more but, with that, there were also a lot of younger volunteers coming in. Despite the changes, we got through it, and we did very well.

Sophia Cuevas is a Prior Park student undergoing work experience at YGTV.