UKHSA colleagues join the Lifeboat Fund

The history of the Lifeboat Fund is tremendously inspiring: people working together, pooling their initiative and skills to raise money for saving lives at sea. There is something heart-warming about successive generations civil servants (and later, BT and Post Office employees) carrying the torch for the RNLI over a 150-year period. The undergirding motivation that led a group of civil servants to come together and raise money for a lifeboat is alive and well, 53 lifeboats later!

The UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) has recently joined these efforts. Here's a report from their first fundraising efforts:

Our nascent Lifeboat Fund team held its first fundraising event on 17 October in Leeds, the opening night of UKHSA’s inaugural annual conference. This was a well-attended quiz in the Wellington Suite of the Royal Armouries, which reached a pinnacle when the tie-break was settled with a round of conkers. In keeping with the theme of the venue, the risk posed by flying nut-matter was well mitigated by suit-of-armour helmets, gamely donned by the brave contestants.

The following day we ran a stall in the exhibition space, where we held a raffle for a very fetching waterproof backpack. This was kindly donated by Aquapac, a sponsor of RNLI. In total we raised the tidy sum of £317.70, promoted the Lifeboat Fund to conference attendees and made new connections across UKHSA and other government departments.

A huge thank you to all who helped organise the prizes, and promotional materials for the exhibition space, and to everyone who generously donated and came to visit our stall. Looking to the future, we hope to host a ‘Wellie Wanging’ contest and to expand our ranks across the organisation.