Sponsor in care home visit
ACARE home with a special rugby themed room was visited by Widnes Vikings’ main sponsors for 2017.
In September MadAbout Media announced that they would be financing and donating sponsorship of the 2017 Widnes Vikings kits to Halton charities Community Integrated Care and the Cathie Stankevitch Foundation to help raise awareness of their work.
Following the gesture, Andy Edwards and Phil Goulding from the company spent an afternoon at Community Integrated Care’s Glenwood Care Home in Widnes.
They also had the opportunity to visit a special Vikings themed room at the home, which was officially opened by Alex Gerrard back in June.
The pair surprised the team by giving them both home and away junior kits, which will take pride of place in the home.
Glenwood is home to eight people who have complex learning disabili- ● ties and also offers shortterm respite support to five people.
People supported at the home have benefitted from the charity’s pioneering partnership with Widnes Vikings through enjoying weekly accessible sports classes with the club’s community team, special match day experi- ences and visits from their heroes.
Glenwood’s registered manager Karen Hayes said: “Community Integrated Care’s partnership with Widnes Vikings is very special and has given the people we support some unforgettable experiences.
“We were absolutely thrilled when MadAbout Media chose to celebrate this by donating sponsorship of the new Vikings junior kits to our charity. This has helped raise awareness of our work, encouraging more fans to support us or find out how they can benefit from the services that we deliver.
“We invited Andy to Glenwood, so we could thank him for his kindness and let him see the impact of our work with the club first-hand.
“It was brilliant to have him spend some time with the people we support and our colleagues.
“We were really impressed by his genuine passion for supporting his local community through Mad About Media’s sponsorship of the club. On behalf of everyone at Community Integrated Care, I’d like to say a big thank you to Andy and his team for this wonderful gesture.”
The Vikings themed room at Glenwood includes a host of Vikings memorabilia, including a signed shirt donated by the team.
The room was developed with the support of Widnes Vikings, the Widnes RL Museum, and the Widnes Weekly News and Liverpool Echo, which all generously donated photographs from their archives.
MadAbout Media founder Andy said: “I think the Vikings Room is brilliant. I’m quite jealous of the wall in here actually, it shows Widnes through the years and I actually wish we had a design as good as this one in our Corporate Box at the stadium!
“What Community Integrated Care and Widnes Vikings have developed together is fantastic.
“Getting the chance to come down, see the room and learn how the partnership has benefitted a number of people has been great.
“The work that Community Integrated Care do, and in particular their work in dementia care, was one of the reasons we selected them to go on the back of the junior shirts for 2017. We are very