ABOUT
99th Garrison in the Community
The 99th Garrison attends many events during the year and the majority of them are to collect funds for charity. Saying that, we will attend non-charity events however we will ask for a donation to one of our favorite charities. That isn't to say we only collect for registered charities; as long as the event has a charitable cause we will help if we can. So, for instance, school fundraising events are attended by us. We have been known to attend birthday parties for young and old alike and we have attended a number of weddings and wedding receptions, in fact we have been present at a couple of wedding ceremonies to make sure the nuptials get off to a good start!
Corporate Work - We are happy to attend corporate events helping to promote either the company, their product or just to attend a corporate function, however we will refuse to support certain products that may not fit with our ethics or that of Star Wars. We do insist that commercial ventures should not see us as a way of getting cheap publicity so we will insist on a substantial donation to our charities. One of our troopers will be attending a trade exhibition for hair products this year!
Charity Work - there are two main charities we collect for: Dreamflight and Walking with Giants Foundation. You can use the links below to see what these and other charities we support do with the funds raised. We also have a soft spot for MS Society (Wirral Branch)!
We have been collecting for charitable causes for.....well it will be 4 years on 01 June 2014. In our first two years we collected about £37,000 for various charities. Between Jan and end Dec 2013 we manged to notch up just over £20,000 and that was thanks to our members who made sure that we broke the £20k barrier....yes they are that keen!
This year one of our members, Dave, fondly known as ApeTrooper, has agreed to hurl himself out of a plane at some dizzying height in order to raise money for Dreamflight....he will be doing this in tandem with someone who knows what they are doing.
One of the events we now do regularly is the Dreamflight Send off. The charity kindly allows us to be part of the busy day in October when the children are due to fly off to Florida. We arrive at the hotel in the morning to provide a bit of a distraction for the children, then we accompany them on the transfer buses (complete with police escort - a sight to behold) and then at the hangar. This is an amazing privilege for us. Also we have been able to nominate one of our members to act as a non medical escort on the trip for two years. Sue our Charity Liaison Officer has been on the trip three times, so last year we nominated Gary Davies and this year Paul Truesdale has been nominated and accepted to go on the trip. So good luck to him!
As well as his nomination to Dreamflight, Paul is also heavily involved in Walking with Giants Foundation so it is a busy year for him.
2014 is a special year as it marks the 100th anniversary of the beginning of WW1 and also the 70th anniversary of the D-Day landings. We will be attending a number of evnets onfor Armed Forces Day and we always help our armed service charities around Remembrance Sunday and this year will be no different, it will just have a slightly different feel to it.
