A wonderful evening of champagne and celebration was had by all last night to thank the supporters of Give Us Time. The event was kindly hosted by the Intercontinental Hotel Westminster, who provided an incredible array of food alongside champagne generously donated by Laurent Perrier.
Give Us Time is a charity I set up last year to give members of our armed forces time away with their loved ones after operations.
During my time at the Ministry of Defence I realised that, while we were making fantastic improvements in the care of those physically injured in Afghanistan and substantial improvements for those mentally injured, we were not doing enough to support service families. Even a normal deployment interval can disrupt family life and situations can be made much worse if there is physical or psychological long-term damage. I strongly believe that happy service families are the bedrock of happy service personnel.
Give Us Time aims to help the families of those killed and injured as well as those who just need to recover, by giving them time, in neutral space, to adjust together. That’s why we’ve been asking those with holiday homes, timeshares or second homes to give us their unused weeks so that we can help provide holidays for the families of military personnel deployed on combat operations — without which, Give Us Time could not work.
We are also celebrating the launch of our new website at www.giveustime.org.uk, which allows holiday donors to sign up and list holidays for service families.
The charity has just run its first pilot holidays for five military families with great success. The soldiers and their families all had a fantastic time and very much appreciated the opportunity to spend some quality time together without the pressures of home life. Our thanks go out to the following for providing us with some fabulous holidays:
Terry Vose, Managing Director of the Moness Resort in Scotland.
Mark Cushway, CEO for Silverpoint, who generously supplied two weeks, one in Devon and one in Tenerife.
RCI, an exchange company who supplied a MacDonald Resort week in Scotland, run by Chief Executive of MacDonald Hotels Simon Jackson.
Roy Peires, CEO for Club la Costa, who supplied a week in Cornwall.
With more generous donations like these, Give Us Time will make a great impact on the lives of our servicemen and women as well as their families. Together, we can show our support for the fantastic job they do.