The Sunday Times Style magazine has launched a campaign leaning on its niche in the beauty industry to raise money to support the distribution of care packages for frontline nurses.
Launching its #KissesforNHS Instagram fundraiser, the magazine asked readers on Sunday to ‘Put on your brightest lipstick, take a selfie, post it on Instagram’ with the hashtag. Readers are to donate £5 to the charity We C U 2020 and nominate five people to do the same.
The charity We C U 2020 is also supported by News UK stablemate The Sun’s Fabulous magazine which has so far received £1million worth of much-needed toiletries to distribute to frontline NHS workers.
Donations have included 30,000 body moisturisers, 24,000 lip balms and 11,000 hand creams from top beauty brands.
On launching the campaign last month, Fabulous said, “We were shocked by pictures of NHS staff showing their skin damaged by lack of sleep, using hand sanitiser non-stop and having to wear PPE all day, every day – so Fabulous wanted to do what it could to help.”
In some cases excessive hand washing has left workers with contact dermatitis – a painful skin condition leaving nurses with sore, cracked and bleeding hands.
The Sun reported that almost 90 per cent of UK nurses suffer from the condition, which is estimated to cost the NHS up to £9m each year.
Healthcare workers can request goody bags to receive the products for themselves and their teams.
Style beauty editor Sarah Jossel has said that donations for the Sunday Times magazine’s new selfie campaign will go towards warehouse and delivery costs to help the campaign spread nationwide as requests come in.
This drive is the latest in a series of practical approaches newspapers have taken to support frontline workers.
Last week, Style magazine launched a separate appeal asking readers to fund a £10 holster designed to resolve the issue of intensive care nurses wearing full PPE with no access to pockets. A custom-designed Holdster allows nurses to keep their phones, pens, pagers, cash and other items with them while working on ICU shifts.
The Times and The Sunday Times kick-started the Holdster appeal by donating £15,000 to the project which will support healthcare workers during the pandemic and beyond.
