Santa Fun Run campaign raises nearly £30,000 for Katharine House Hospice

Katharine House Hospice’s annual Santa Fun Run took place on Sunday December 15 with an extraordinary fundraising push from all the runners, which includes more than 6,000 students from local primary and secondary schools.

It’s still early days for all donations to be passed on to the hospice, however, following an overwhelming response to the charity, they look all set to receive close to £30,000, which is enough to help fund their community nursing service for 18 days.

With all the Covid restrictions, the hospice looked at new ways to make one of their biggest fundraisers work safely.

Instead of more than 300 Santas running around a field in Banbury, they took it out into the community so that villages as far apart as Brackley, Hook Norton, Milton-under-Wychwood and Syresham, amongst many others, saw Santas running through the streets, local parks and fields bringing good cheer and raising money for Katharine House.

Banbury United’s football academy at Banbury and Bicester College are also stepping up to the challenge. On Wednesday December 16, coach Ryan Jones and 26 of their students will be participating in the Santa Fun Run.

Even more heartwarming has been the take up by 20 local schools. Rebecca Lister, Aspirations Lead at Hanwell Fields school said: “For the past six years we have supported Katharine House with different events whenever we possibly could and we knew they were struggling this year because of Covid.

"Katharine House is very close to us as a school as sadly we have parents who have had loved ones in their care. We wanted to be able to say thank you to them for looking after our families.

"The children loved it. They were so happy to be able to help. There were 420 in total and between them they have raised £8,300. We will definitely take part if the hospice does it next Christmas as we want to do all we can to support them.”

A parent of one of the children at Hanwell Fields said: “We couldn’t believe how much money it takes to run the hospice every day. You took such good care of my grandad and our family would do anything to repay the care he received.”

Hannah MacLachlan, a PE teacher at Southam School, also said: “We had such a great time taking part in the Santa Schools Relay for Katharine House.

"All of our students threw themselves into the challenge and really took on board the meaning of raising vital funds for the hospice and we couldn’t believe it takes around £9 a minute to run the hospice.

It was such a great way to bring the school together. One of our students, Esme, was even able to join in from home while she was isolating and completed her leg of the run on her treadmill."

The hospice would like to say a massive thank you to everyone who participated. It has been an incredible effort and is hugely appreciated by everyone at Katharine House.