Supporting the Foundation’s community nursing outreach and Mobile Information Unit service, this powerful partnership will reach and impact over 100,000 people in Ireland providing lifesaving information on cancer prevention and early detection to communities across Ireland.
March 31st: The Marie Keating Foundation is delighted to announce their selection as one of the Dalata Hotel Group’s chosen charity partners for 2022.
Together, Dalata Hotel Group and Marie Keating Foundation will strive to deliver ‘Dalata’s Drive to Defeat Cancer’. This will involve fundraising to support Marie Keating’s core community nursing and Mobile Information Unit service. This nationwide service will facilitate over 100,000 individual conversations between nurses and members of the public on spotting the signs of cancer.
Due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, and its restrictions, on cancer services community-based initiatives, like this are more important than ever before.
Speaking on why this free service is so important CEO at the Marie Keating Foundation Liz Yeates explains, ‘We are so delighted to have been selected as the Dalata Hotel Group Charity Partner for the next three years, in the Republic of Ireland. The partnership will see our specialist nurses and mobile information units visiting Dalata hotels as well as schools and community groups in locations all around Ireland to educate 100,000 people about cancer prevention and the signs and symptoms of cancer. The support of Dalata and their staff over the next three years will allow us to fund this lifesaving service, which is needed now more then ever as we start to experience the impact that the pandemic and its restrictions have had, and continues to have, on cancer services. Community based initiatives like ours will be important to ensure information, support and encouragement is available freely and easily to all and will be vital in our attempt to reduce the harm that COVID-19 is likely to have on delayed and missed cancer diagnoses.’
This partnership is being announced as a part of the group’s Dalata Digs Deep initiative which sees fundraising activities taking place at all 47 of the company’s hotels across Ireland, the UK and continental Europe.
As an employee driven initiative, it was decided through an employee vote that ‘Health and Wellbeing’ would be a core focus for the next fundraising period. The three charities, including the Marie Keating Foundation, Leukaemia Care and Air Ambulance NI, were selected by Dalata’s dedicated Charity Committee who looked at specific charities focused on improving lives, with each charity representing a different geographical region (Republic of Ireland, Great Britain and Northern Ireland).
Dalata Hotel Group, which operates Clayton and Maldron Hotels, raised an incredible €1.5 million for its previous charity partners through employee fundraising and matching corporate donations.
Dalata Hotel Group’s Chief Operating Officer, Des McCann said the company is proud to be continuing its charity work to support the Marie Keating Foundation in the Republic of Ireland, Leukaemia Care in Great Britain and Air Ambulance Northern Ireland in Northern Ireland, over the coming years.
He said: “Great consideration has gone into selecting our new charity partners for the next three years. Our approach is to engage with our teams to understand the issues they care about which then allows Dalata and the charity to build a more meaningful partnership over a three year period. Our teams get to know the organisations for which they are raising the funds really well and it means we can target our energy and resources to where they produce maximum benefit for the charities and their clients.
“All of our charities are focussed on helping to save lives. We know the pandemic has put health care providers under extreme strain, both in Ireland and the UK, therefore it was important to us to select charities which do so much great work in helping to support our health services.”
Claire Oliver McGarry, Group HR Manager at Dalata Hotel Group, said Dalata Digs Deep has grown into a major fundraising driver which has the power to make a significant difference to the charities it supports.
She said: “When we started out, we could never have imagined how engaged our people would become with this initiative and how it would enrich the lives of so many within Dalata, working together for worthy causes.
“Our people really go above and beyond when it comes to supporting fundraising activities, without them Dalata Digs Deep could not have raised the huge sums of money it has to date.
“I want to pay tribute to all of the Dalata staff, and I am excited to see what our next chapter of supporting these three great charities brings.”
To learn more about this partnership, and the two other outstanding charities selected as a part of this sponsorship programme, please visit www.dalatahotelgroup.com
