FUNDRAISING NEWS

General Donations

The charity has no statutory support and continues to fundraise and seek awards and donations to keep all the various support facilities funded. These include free counselling, a buddy service, contact through texting and email, a telephone helpline plus weekly meetings and travel throughout the Highlands area. To make a donation to our organisation go to: http://www.justgiving.com/hapis/.

HAPIS needs to raise £10,000 per year so every donation is greatly appreciated. There are no paid staff and all money is ploughed back into the service. So please dig deep and donate now to this Highland charity which supports women and their families in so many individual and group ways when they are going through the debilitating illness of postnatal depression.

• The sum of  £995 was raised by a 2 day collection at Tesco's  by volunteers on 14th and 15th March 2007.  Thanks to all volunteers and to the public for their generosity .

WELL DONE AND THANK YOU TO 'TEAM KATE'

HAPIS would like to say an extremely big "THANK YOU" and "WELL DONE" to 'Team Kate' who raised over £4,500 for the charity, running the Baxter's River Ness 10k Run on Sunday 4 October.

The nine friends travelled from all over the UK to take part in the race - in memory of their friend Kate Chetwynd from Forres who, while suffering from extreme post natal depression last year - took her own life.

Lorna Murdoch, HAPIS chairwoman said: "We cannot express enough thanks to 'Team Kate' for taking the time to train, fund raise and travel all the way to Inverness to take part in the River Ness 10k. It is devastating when a mother loses her battle with post natal depression but we are grateful that this has inspired friends and family to fundraise for HAPIS in this way.

"We feel we are an important service for families across the Highlands and ongoing fundraising is vital for us to continue to offer that support, much of which involves providing private counselling for mums, which is a big step in the healing process."

Post natal depression affected Kate slightly with first son William, now three, but was much more severe following the birth of Alexander in April 2008. Kate's husband Tom said: "We are extremely grateful to 'Team Kate' for their mammoth efforts to raise funds for HAPIS so that hopefully other families will not have to experience a loss like ours."

Team Kate is: Helen Prifti from Buckinghamshire, Suzi Kerr from Gloucester, Sarah Macquaker, Irene Keith and Sam Peck from Edinburgh, Sarah Gauld from Perth, Lizzie Richards from Culbokie, Nikki Howard from Forres and Nicole Le Vaillant from Elgin.