Strangford coffee mornings boost Hospice funds

Strangford coffee mornings boost Hospice funds

6 September 2017

OVER the past two decades, the Cuan Guest Inn in Strangford has very generously sponsored monthly coffee mornings for the local Northern Ireland Hospice Support Group which has raised around £30,000 for the charity.

Every third Thursday of the month, from September through to June, members and friends of the Strangford and Ardglass Hospice Support Group gather in the lounge bar to enjoy the excellent hospitality of Peter and Caroline McErlean. 

Over coffee and delicious cream scones baked on the premises, the participants bring one another up-to-date on news and views, local and otherwise.

The Cuan sponsorship of the Hospice began back in 1996 after one of the guesthouse’s immediate neighbours, Anna Strong, developed terminal cancer. 

Anna was a member of the support group that formed in the village in 1985, thanks to the fact that another Strangford resident, Betty Irwin, was the Secretary of the NI Hospice when it was first founded.

The Strangford and Ardglass NI Hospice Support Group exists to raise funds to help finance hospice care provision that nowadays takes place both in people’s homes and for inpatients at the recently refurbished and extended adult hospice at Somerton House in north Belfast. 

The group also raises funds for the NI Children’s Hospice in Newtownabbey that assists families with life-limited young people. 

The monthly Cuan coffee get-togethers raise a total of around £600 every year and in addition, a ‘big coffee morning’ event every autumn — usually held in September or October and which includes a raffle — raises a further £700 to £800. 

Taken together, the Cuan coffee mornings over the past 21 years have raised a magnificent total of around £30,000 for the work of NI Hospice.

The next big coffee morning at the Cuan takes place on Thursday, September 21 at 10.30am, with an open invitation extended to people to attend.