International Day of Charity is celebrated on 5th September and aims to raise awareness and give a platform to charity organisations around the world.
Happy Days Nurseries & Pre-Schools are recognising International Day of Charity on Thursday 5th September 2024 by supporting two important charities, Children’s Hospice South West and The National Lobster Hatchery.
Our nurseries located in Cornwall and Plymouth will be celebrating a ‘Lobster Week’ starting on 5th September with lobster themed activities to raise money for this local charity. Throughout the week, children and our nursery teams will be learning more about lobsters, the environment they live in and what we can do to sustain them. The National Lobster Hatchery is a marine conservation, research and education charity based in Padstow, Cornwall, UK. Fisheries around the world are suffering from major over-exploitation. The Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations state that over 75% of the world’s major fisheries are either: fully exploited, over-exploited, depleted or recovering. Impact on our marine resources is a much wider problem than just lobsters and their visitor centre hopes to broaden their message to address the key sustainability issues faced by our coastal fisheries and provide some clear solutions to these issues.
Nicola O’Donnell, Chief Operating Officer, stated, “One of our charitable outputs is our conservation project to stock enhance the European lobster here in Cornwall and IOS. By working with some sustainable focused fishers, we are raising and releasing baby lobsters off our coast with an approx. improved survival rate of 1000%. We do this here in our hatchery where we nurture our newborn lobsters in our very own ‘Lobster Nursery’. Our centre is open all year round where visitors can learn more about sustainability, conservation and of course see lots of lobsters! Happy Days support is not only helping to help us raise more babies, but by including local marine conservation topics in their curriculum, they are helping spread key educational messages and inspire our future marine biologists! We are incredibly grateful for their support and are very much looking forward to the very first ‘Lobster Week’.”
The remainder of our nurseries across the South West and Wales will be carrying out various activities on International Day of Charity to raise money for our charity of the year, Children’s Hospice South West (CHSW). For more than 30 years Children’s Hospice South West has been caring for children and young people with life-threatening and life-limiting conditions by providing hospice care and professional family support services. The care offered at each of their three hospices is not just about medical and nursing support for sick children and young people but enriching the lives of them and their whole family.
For more information on how to support these events, speak to your nursery manager. For more information on CHSW visit: https://www.chsw.org.uk/ To donate to CHSW, visit our Just Giving Page: https://www.justgiving.com/fundraising/happy-days-nurseries To find out more about The National Lobster Hatchery, visit: https://nationallobsterhatchery.co.uk/