St. Gemma

St. Gemma’s Hospice, Leeds has come up with a brilliantly simple, but effective way of both remembering loved ones and raising much needed funds for their work of caring for those with life-limiting conditions at the same time. Their new Gardens of Hope offer four virtual flower gardens, that spring into life with new blooms every time someone sponsors one.

The Rose Garden, Lily Pond, Crocus Field and Clematis Wall offer donors a chance to create a new flower and leave a short message about a loved one, linked to the flower. Place your cursor over the flower and the message appears.

The page that introduces the gardens also gives a useful breakdown of various things different levels of donation can pay for, helping potential donors to decide what amount they wish to give for their flower.

The total uniqueness of this new virtual in memoriam initiative is a brilliant example of how a  medium sized charity with no large budget for swanky web designers that I’m sure many others will, in time, want to follow.

Another great opportunity with something like this is to link it through social networking sites, such as FaceBook, MySpace or Twitter, given that one can do all of this online.

Check it out at: http://www.st-gemma.co.uk/gardensofhope/main.htm