Boost for Heroes charity

9:18am Thursday 1st November 2007

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MONEY is pouring in for the Help for Heroes charity set up by Downton cartoonist Bryn Parry and wife Emma to support wounded British servicemen and women.

The national charity, launched in October and which has its headquarters at Tidworth, is campaigning to raise £5 million to help build a much needed swimming pool and gym complex at Headley Court, the tri-service rehabilitation centre in Surrey.

The aim is to get the facilities built by this time next year and the initial response from the public and businesses has been outstanding.

Some £450,000 has so far been donated by a generous public and £2.5 million pledged from businesses.

Celebrities have also flocked to the cause including, Jeremy Clarkson, James Blunt, Ross Kemp and Gordon Ramsey.

And the charity is now planning a big push in every corner of the UK, to transform Help for Heroes from just another charity into a household name.

Founder Bryn Parry said: "We are all busy, bound up in our own lives, but then we hear something that makes us think, touches us, makes us connect to the world we live in, makes us stop and really focus.

"For me it was meeting servicemen at Selly Oak Hospital. We walked into a ward of 30 or so soldiers, sitting or lying on their beds, in T-shirts and boxers and they were wounded. They were not lying there under white sheets like in the movies, they were on top of the bedclothes and they were missing arms and legs. One man was missing both his legs and his neck was in a brace. He was consoling the son of another soldier."

Bryn's initial work has exposed and harnessed incredible grassroots support, which will culminate in The Big Battlefield Bike Ride, from May 26 to June 1 next year.

Meanwhile the charity needs communities and organisations to rally round, put their thinking caps on and start raising money and awareness.

"We need local and national businesses to put us on their charity lists and offer special deals to returning servicemen - anything that captures the public's support for servicemen and women who sacrifice so much for us," said a spokeswoman.

Our service personnel need us to start backing them and this is a way the whole nation can help regardless of political persuasion or depth of social consciousness.

For more information about Help for Heroes please visit www.helpforheroes.org.uk.

• Owners of the Headquarters Barber Shop in High Street, Amesbury, are supporting Help for Heroes by donating £1 from every haircut carried out between November 12 and 17.