Month: November 2024

Leicester business bosses have faced the ultimate networking test during the Leicester Business Festival (LBF) event, Boss Breakout, organised by Leicester Hospitals Charity. The participants at the event on Thursday 7 November raised over £22,000 in the space of a few hours to fund innovative cutting-edge technology like Smileyscope’s for Leicester Childrens Hospital! 

For the second year running business leaders were ‘locked up’ within the Charity pop-up space in the Haymarket Shopping Centre and had to call upon their networks to collectively fundraise the money to secure their “release”. 

Leicester Hospitals Charity created a pop-up space where nine business leaders came together on Thursday 7 November to raise money during LBF for Leicester Hospitals. The Directors, CEOs and MDs who signed up needed to deploy their best sales tactics and innovative convincing skills to encourage donations from their personal and professional networks to help them “break out” and raise money to improve the patient experience for children and young people at University Hospitals of Leicester NHS Trust (UHL). 

Young patients come to hospital for numerous reasons and sometimes may be in unfamiliar situations like procedures. Boss Break Out aimed to raise funds for innovative equipment like Smileyscope’s. This piece of technology is a specialised VR headset designed by medical professionals to help children feel calm and relaxed during unfamiliar procedures such as blood tests and MRI scans. As part of Leicester Business Festival our nine business leaders raised a record-breaking incredible £22,000 and counting! This amount will go to making a difference for our young patients at Leicester Children’s Hospital. 

Sunita Patel, Head of Charity at Leicester Hospitals Charity said: “The incredible business community across the East Midlands exceeded all our expectations with their passion, dedication, and kindness. The business leaders as part of Boss Break Out far surpassed their target of raising £1000 each and in record time too. What started only last year as a new corporate fundraising concept for us, has already become a key event in the Leicester Business Festival calendar, and we are absolutely thrilled with the result of everybody’s hard work. Thank you so much to every single individual who donated yesterday and those businesses who supported us with space and items. Together, you have made great things happen for children and young people undergoing treatment at Leicester’s Hospitals.” 

Dean Cross, Centre Manager at Haymarket, said: “Our team has thoroughly enjoyed enabling Leicester Hospitals Charity to ‘lock up’ local bosses in aid of such a good cause. To have been able to help the charity raise tens of thousands of pounds in just a few hours is brilliant. Well done to all the willing bosses who can now enjoy their freedom and to the Leicester Hospitals Charity team for organising such a fun and productive fundraising initiative.”’ 

If you want to help, be a part of this years Boss Breakout campaign to bring innovative technology to help our Children’s Hospital there is still time to make a gift, simply visit: https://leicesterhospitalscharity.org.uk/campaign/fundraising/team/48/