Theatres at HRI have launched a truly amazing fundraising drive to help fly home a colleague's three-year-old son and his family for Christmas!.

Our theatre practitioner Obe Morake is very poorly with pancreatic cancer and the race is on to bring his family - including his three year old son (see attachments) - home from South Africa in time for Christmas.

A baking day supported by all the theatres team raised £1,000, and a raffle organised by Rachel Foster brought in over £1000.

Meanwhile, orderly Darren Kirk is having his head and beard shaved in the New Year and has raised £600 in pledges already, and so far they have topped more than £4,000 in a couple of months.

Acre Mills colleagues have also raised £500 in donations as well as the surgical procedure department undertaking a raffle in his honour. There have also been many very generous donations from his theatre friends. The department has emailed the British Embassy in Johannesburg to fast track visas to make it happen.

Martyn Gothard, his colleague, is in close contact with Obe during his illness and his family.

He said: " Obe is one of the nicest people you can ever wish to meet both professionally and personally. He always has a smile on his face and is very compassionate towards his colleagues and his patients."

"Colleagues across the Trust who don't even know him have been fundraising! As we speak, Obe`s sister is trying to organise flights to the UK in time for Christmas having had confirmation that the visas have been approved."

Obe has been at the Trust for about three years and was formerly in the British Army and lives in Holmfirth. His colleagues recently organised a day out to see Obe's fave team Arsenal play Sheffield Wednesday in the Football League Cup, though his son is obviously a Huddersfield Town supporter.

Martyn added, "I would like to thank everybody for all their efforts during this period. Obe, his wife Maggie, and the whole family are humbled and overwhelmed by the response. 

We want to do this for Obe for all sorts of reasons. We want this to be the best Christmas ever.”