Dragon Taxis Vale of Glamorgan has donated £5000 to Welsh children’s hospice, Ty Hafan.

Dragon Taxis Vale of Glamorgan has donated £5000 to Welsh children’s hospice, Ty Hafan. The campaign, launched in July, saw Dragon Taxis donate a percentage of all app bookings across the Vale of Glamorgan – one of the most recent regions to fall into Dragon Taxis’ service area – to the charity.

Tŷ Hafan, one of the UK’s most well established and leading paediatric palliative care charities, offers comfort, care and support to life-limited children, young people and their families. This care is delivered at the hospice, in the community and in people’s homes, so that families can make the most of the time they have left together.

It costs just over £12,000 to keep the hospice open for just one day. South Wales’ largest private hire and taxi firm, Dragon Taxis, acquired A2B Taxis in Barry in April to extend its service into Barry, Sully, and the Vale of Glamorgan.

The £5000 donation, which will help fund a weekend’s stay for a family at the hospice, has come directly from Dragon Taxis, so that the 120 local Vale licenced driver partners aren’t out of pocket.

Richard Davies from Dragon Taxis said: “We wanted to give something back to our local community and support a local charity that really makes a difference. The pandemic has been a very tough time for everybody, but especially charities, which have seen a drop in donations, because of the public’s cash struggles as well as the number of volunteers at charity shops dropping firstly because of social distancing measures and also because shops had to shut. “We’re incredibly proud to be able to support funding a full weekend’s stay at the hospice for a child in need.”

Kelly Dibble, Corporate Senior Fundraiser for Tŷ Hafan, said: “All of us at Tŷ Hafan would like to say a huge thank you to Dragon Taxis and to their local customers who helped make this campaign such a success. The funds raised will help us be there for children with life-limiting conditions and their families at this difficult time, both at our hospice and out in the community."

This donation to Tŷ Hafan is the latest in a series of local community initiatives by Dragon Taxis. In February this year, the firm paid for thousands of free taxi rides for the elderly and vulnerable to get to their vaccination appointments in Bridgend, Newport, Cardiff and Torfaen.

It has also delivered food parcels to NHS staff at the Heath Hospital in Cardiff and the Royal Gwent Hospital in Newport, as well as food bank donations to the Bigger Picture in Newport and the Santa Appeal in Torfaen.

Dragon Taxis is owned by transportation technology innovators Veezu, based in Newport along with other local service hubs A2B Radio Cars in the West Midlands, Amber Cars in Leeds, Go Carz in Shropshire and V Cars in the South West.