A fundraising campaign in support of a landmark new centre for healthcare training has received a boost with two major donations.
The Fundraising Team at Bournemouth University has secured two grants, totalling £350,000, for the new Bournemouth Gateway Building.
An initial grant of £250,000 from the Garfield Weston Foundation, a family-founded grant making trust, was awarded in May. It has now been followed by a £100,000 pledge from The Wolfson Foundation, a charity set up to support and promote excellence in the fields of science, medicine, the arts and humanities.
The £42.5m Gateway project will provide over 10,000m2 of teaching and learning space including a training operating theatre, clinical skills laboratories, an acute ward and specialist research areas. It will sit off the A338 St Paul’s roundabout, near the main train station in Bournemouth, and will act as a landmark for the gateway into the university’s Lansdowne site and the town centre.
The facility will train the nurses, midwives, paramedics and allied health professionals of tomorrow, to help meet a growing staff shortage in NHS trusts across the UK.
Claire House-Norman, Director of Fundraising and Alumni Relations at Bournemouth University, said: “We are delighted with this start to our fundraising campaign for the new home for our Health and Social Sciences Faculty. We are grateful to both the Garfield Weston Foundation and The Wolfson Foundation, whose pledges recognise the quality and scope of this exciting project.
“We are fundraising to meet £2m of the project’s cost by 2019 and these initial grants provide a strong foundation on which to build.”
Anyone interested in supporting the project, either through general gifts or by funding pieces of equipment or specific rooms, should get in touch with the Fundraising Team.
