Tea Party ladies return with their coffee morning in aid of Our Lady’s Hospice, Harold’s Cross
Coffee morning from the Tea Party Girls in aid of the hospice
THE TEA PARTY GIRLS will host their annual coffee morning in aid of Our Lady’s Hospice Harold’s Cross in Alderwood at 11.30am on Saturday, September 12.
The Tea Party Girls’ annual community fundraising event returns this month to the garden of 21 Alderwood Avenue for its fifth instalment after
€2,700 was raised in aid of the local hospice last year, with around €14,000 raised for charity since its inception.
The group of Springfield neighbours, Catherine Curry, Joan Wallace, Rita Cowap, Liz Russell, Phyllis Boyd, and Winnie Manzor have been putting the event on since 2021, initially as part of the Bewley’s Big Coffee Morning Social for Hospice.
The Tea Party Girls decided to put it on as several people in Alderwood Avenue had passed from a battle with cancer or lost someone as a result of it.
One of the gang, Catherine Curry, is one of the people who lost someone close to her and underlined the importance of the coffee mornings.
Catherine said: “We’d all just have a cup of tea, just to pass the time of day, so to speak, and then then we decided that we start to do something because in the cul-de-sac that we live in, there’s quite a few people that have passed away with cancer.
“My husband being one of them . . . we gradually built it up now for the last five years and we seem to have a very successful outcome of it.
“We just want to continue it to give our support to the people that have cancer and the people that are being diagnosed and getting help from the hospital.”
The group regularly meet together for their own coffee mornings and the intimate nature of these casual hangouts is extended to more neighbours every year through the charity coffee mornings.
This welcoming atmosphere is opened to allow other people living in the surrounding parts of the estate to join in with the fundraiser event and chip in for a good cause.
Catherine noted that the group often confide in one another about their problems and their feelings, and that the strong bond created over the years endures.
“It keeps us all active. We have a laugh and a little joke about things, and then if any of us has a little problem about something, we can help each other with it if we need to.
“Most of us that are involved in it are over 50 years as neighbours living up here, so we go back a long way.”
