Castlebrae fundraising success

Reading time: 2 minutes

A fundraising campaign for local families has raised a staggering £8,000 after Castlebrae Community High School reached out to the Centre for Regenerative Medicine (CRM) asking to help those who may be struggling over Christmas.

Bioquarter staff and students visiting Castlebrae High School in 2019.

CRM led the campaign with donations coming in from across BioQuarter, including Balfour Beatty and many of their suppliers. The school are amazed and very grateful for the generous donations.

The Castlebrae senior leadership team commented “Our hope was to purchase Christmas presents, food and a power-card for each one of our most vulnerable families. We are looking to support well over 200 families.” CRM has a longstanding relationship with Castlebrae with many initiatives benefiting pupils as well as CRM staff and students.

Dr Gordon McLean, in the Centre for Regenerative Medicine led the fundraising effort and was thrilled with the results: “We’ve had a long partnership with the school which started as some of our students providing mentoring and exam help to Castlebrae Science students. Our links with the school have grown and when I received the email from James, one of their management team, two weeks before Christmas it really upset me that so many of their pupils were facing such a bleak Christmas. It was not something I could ignore and after discussing with a few colleagues decided to set up a Just Giving page. I composed an accompanying email which included some of James’ original email and was astonished when the total rocketed through my initial £1,000 target in 30min. The school and I are amazed and humbled by the generosity and speed of the response. £8,000 is beyond anything I would have thought possible in the short timeframe.”