BLESMA

[destinyangel]

Hi all.

As I work for BLESMA I feel I must mention them! BLESMA is the British Limbless Ex-Servicemen's Association - we support DIRECTLY those servicemen and women who have lost limbs (or the use of) or eyes/sight. Established in 1932 we have our own welfare service with seven Area Welfare Officers, over 50 volunteer welfare reps and 19 branches. We have an extensive rehabilitation programme. We don't do our own fundraising and we receive no Government funding whatsoever, and rely on the genorisity of the general public. Help for Heroes are generating a huge amount of interest but what Joe Public does not know is that H4H raises funds purely for capital projects, such as the swimming pool at Headley Court, which is great but they do NOT support servicemen and women directly, and their criteria only covers those injured in Iraq or Afghanistan since 9/11 and are STILL SERVING - once they have left the service they no longer qualify. BLESMA continues to support these heroes, and indeed a lot of our members are veterans from WW2, Falklands, Bosnia, Northern Ireland etc. please check out our website and watch the rehab videos. You will be amazed! thank you.
Sorry to go on and on and on........ but I really do believe in the cause.

www.blesma.org

[alison]

Well done you, it is a fantastic charity. Simon being x services always donates where possible to BLESMA. It annoys me that something like this has to rely on donations.

[foxmeister]

I am so pleased to see BLESMA get a mention, and I take my hat off to you. Since my service days I realise how little the government supports the bad publicity that often come home after laying everything on the line for their mates. I am of course talking about the wounded, and the dependents of those who don't make it..

It makes my blood boil to know that the public have to fund the service charities, but fingers crossed, things might change in May.

Simon

[destinyangel]

Thanks for your kind words! Simon I agree with you, this job has been very enlightening to me, it is a disgrace how the casualty numbers are kept quiet - everytime you hear that someone has been killed you know for sure there will be several others with life changing injuries - many of them now are coming back as triple amputees - our youngest member is 18.

[bertiesmum]

thats such ashame.....the government are shocking, they really dont care about our soldiers; i think its a disgrace.

My friend is in the army and he wants to go to afganistan, we have begged him not to go, but that is what he wants so we are supporting him as much as possible; we will be sending out as much stuff as possible for him and his friends (even if its just sweets/magazines)

:-)