7th November 2025
Advanté Festive Shutdown 2025
Important Information...
Doing our little bit for a BIG cause: Volunteering at Little Havens Hospice
This week our teams spent two wonderful days volunteering at Little Havens Hospice, in Benfleet.
Volunteering at Little Havens Hospice
On Tuesday and Wednesday this week our teams at Advanté headed to Little Havens in Benfleet, Essex for two days of volunteering. Our staff at Advanté are offered a Volunteering Day every year and are encouraged to support local communities by working with charitable organisations or fundraising initiatives.
Little Havens provides specialist care and support for babies, children, young people and their whole families living with complex or incurable conditions, from Essex and the surrounding boroughs, and what an incredible job they do!
Little Havens is part of Havens Hospices, an incredible charity that provides care and a wide range of other support services, free of charge, from diagnosis and throughout life’s journey. Our teams were more than happy to lend a hand and help with tasks in and around the Hospice.
To respect the privacy of the families and staff at Little Havens, we have not taken any photos of the main facilities or outdoor play areas. Our teams were given a talk at the start of the day to demonstrate just how important their services are to so many people.
The gardens at Little Havens are extremely important as they provide sensory and wheelchair-accessible outdoor experiences for anyone using them.
Most of the play equipment and allotment areas are adapted for wheelchair-users and require a lot of work from corporate volunteers to ensure everything is fit for purpose.
Both our teams, joined by pollinators and a toad, got straight to work with the gardening tasks at hand, which included painting, weeding and watering plants at the entrances, walkways and allotments.
All these tasks really help to keep the gardens tidy, safe and more accessible by maintaining a lovely safe space for families to spend time in.
“I can’t recommend volunteering with Havens enough. I’ve volunteered at both Havens Hospice in Southend, and now Little Havens in Benfleet, and I’ve enjoyed every second. The work they do is truly outstanding, so it feels great to help make a difference too. Little Havens is a special place, full of positivity and beautiful details. Being outside in nature is very therapeutic, I even found a toad, which brought a smile to everyone’s faces!”
– Rebecca Milne, Marketing Executive at Advanté
A huge well done and thank you to our teams:
Team 1: Mandy Messenger, Carol Templar, Alex Britain, Mark Gatland and Dave Emberson
Team 2: Jo Ward, Rebecca Milne, Mark Biddle, Georgina Hammond and Susan Millership
The whole Advanté volunteering team did an amazing job over the two days and are very much looking forward to returning to help at the hospice again soon.
Haven Hospices mainly rely on charitable donations. If you want to help, volunteer your time at one of the locations of Havens Hospices, or raise money through events and challenges please visit the following link and together, let’s help this great cause continue their inspiring work.
