Civil Service in the news

Helping those who need it most

Paul with Madalina, who the appeal has been helping, and her father

Paul Grant is a senior lecturer in Policy and Government at the National School of Government and main face of the Sunningdale Park Romania Appeal. The Appeal raises money to help relieve the poverty and sickness of children and young adults in Romania, in particular a group with the blood disorder thalassaemia.

Could you explain a bit about the Sunningdale Park Romania Appeal?

The Sunningdale Park Romania Appeal is a registered charity whose formal objective is ‘to relieve the poverty and sickness of children and young persons in Romania in particular by providing…financial assistance to the families of such children or young persons.’

The Appeal was first established in November 1990 by Brian Whalley who was then on the staff of the Civil Service College now National School of Government (NSG) in response to media coverage at that time of children living in appalling conditions in Romanian orphanages.

The focus of the Appeal’s attention has since moved on to assisting a group of young adults who have the blood disorder thalassaemia. Children born with thalassaemia lack the ability to produce normal red blood cells and are so chronically fatigued that they fail to thrive and do not grow normally.

The only treatment that is available is regular transfusions of red blood cells, which are required every three to four weeks. Constant blood transfusions lead to iron overload which can lead to organ failure. Because of this, few poor Romanians who have this disease live past their late 20s.

We are currently supporting the families of five young people who suffer from thalassaemia. These families are extremely poor and the financial assistance the Appeal gives them provides them with a much better standard of living than they would otherwise have. Because the Appeal likes to help the ‘whole person’, as well as providing their families with financial assistance we have also twice flown two of the less ill youngsters over to England for a holiday and have bought a laptop computer for one of the particularly ill young people.

The Appeal’s trustees are all current or former employees of the NSG. Our annual income is around £8,000 per year. Around half of this is raised by running quiz evenings at Sunningdale Park which participants pay to enter.

What’s your role, and how and why did you get involved in voluntary work like this?

I am one of the trustees of the Appeal and in effect its assistant director. I first got involved when back in the early 1990s I offered to help run some of the quiz evenings mentioned above. Through this I got to know Brian Whalley very well and began to take an interest in what was happening to the money that we were raising.

In April 1995 I decided to travel to Romania with Brian to see first hand what the Appeal was doing. Up until that time the Appeal had really been a one person organisation. Others had helped to run quizzes but only Brian had actually been out to Romania to deliver the aid. Once I had met the people the Appeal was helping I then wanted to become more involved and have accompanied Brian on every visit he has made since.

On a number of occasions we drove out to Romania with a car full of aid but more recently we have only flown there partly because the customs formalities and so on were making it increasingly difficult to take aid into Romania but also because increasingly what was need by the recipients was just money.

Since Brian retired from the NSG a few years ago I have been the main face of the Appeal at the NSG, helping to organise fundraising and in particular the quiz nights that we run at Sunningdale Park.

Have you done other volunteering work in the past?

Nothing too major but having three children of my own has got me involved in helping to run various local groups like the cubs and football/cricket clubs.

What do you enjoy about volunteering?

It’s a bit of an obvious thing to say, but what I most get out of being involved with the Appeal is being able to see the real difference it makes to the people we are helping. Because we are in direct contact with the recipients, meeting them as we do once a year, we can see exactly what good we are doing.

To be able to fly two of the youngsters over to England for a holiday has been absolutely fantastic. To see just how excited they are to be able to spend some time in a comfortable home in a foreign country is fantastic. I also enjoy the camaraderie with the other trustees, who are all good friends of mine, and the fun we have running quizzes at Sunningdale Park.

What kind of a difference does the Appeal make and what are you hoping to achieve in future?

If anyone visited Romania today they might wonder why it’s necessary for a charity like ours to exist. Indeed, superficially there have been substantial changes to the country since the overthrow of Nicolae Ceausescu. But for the families we are helping, surprisingly little has changed. It’s hard to see them being in a position, any time in the near future, when the Appeal’s help will no longer be vitally important for them.

Of course we have to question for how long we can keep running the Appeal. It is so reliant on the support of people at the NSG and DeVere conferences who now run the site at Sunningdale Park. In some ways fundraising through our traditional method of running quizzes has become more difficult so we have had to diversify our fundraising. As an example we are holding a ‘Late Summer Proms’ evening at Sunningdale Park on 5 September as a charity fundraiser.

Does your voluntary work affect your work, in terms of outlook, knowledge and skills?

In many ways, as the Appeal is so centred on Sunningdale Park, helping run it feels like part of my job at the NSG (I’m probably better known for this than for anything else I do at the NSG!) To get to know so well people who live in such difficult circumstances clearly affects one’s outlook on life. It really has been a fantastic experience!