This year's selected charity is Help for Heroes

Help For Heroes was the idea of Appeal Chairman Bryn Parry and a group of friends and relations, many of who have connections with serving servicemen and women. Bryn and his wife Emma wanted to do something to help the wounded and came up with the idea of a sponsored bike ride. They mentioned it to some friends who mentioned it to some more friends and suddenly Help For Heroes was born and growing fast. A flurry of visits to various offices led to the campaign being blessed by the head of the army, Chief of the General Staff, General Sir Richard Dannatt.

Why was Help for Heroes founded?
Bryn and Emma Parry have a son in the Army and Bryn served for 10 years in The Royal Green Jackets, now The Rifles. He did three tours in Northern Ireland including one in South Armagh when the battalion lost 7 killed. Bryn left the Army in 1985 and the Parrys run their own business publishing Bryn’s cartoons and designing gift products.
Bryn and Emma wanted to do something to help the wounded from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and decided to do a charity bike ride. The original idea was to raise £10,000; things have moved on from there!
H4H is registered as a charity and has raised over £5.5million since its launch in October 2007. The initial fund raising target is £6m.

What is H4H aiming to do?
H4H’s first task is to raise £6million to help provide a swimming pool and gymnasium at Headley Court. The task was identified for H4H by MOD as a ‘Good to have’ rather than a ‘need’. There is never enough money in the Defence budget to do everything that the MOD would like to do, so when a charity offers to help-it is welcomed.

Surely the MOD should be looking after the wounded, not a charity?
The MOD is looking after the wounded very well at Headley Court, it is a wonderful place; it just needs more money to be able to do even better.

Surely H4H's existence could be seen to be to be a criticism of the MOD, why was it needed?
H4H is strictly non political and accepts that wars happen under any government. H4H seeks to support those people wounded in war, not to criticise the reasons for those conflicts.

Further Information
For further information on Help for Heroes please click on the button below:-