The Colloquium is Cochrane's annual flagship event, bringing people together from around the world to discuss research into important global health questions and to promote evidence-informed health care. This year, the Colloquium took place in Edinburgh, UK, in September and was hosted by Cochrane UK. Almost 1300 people from 57 countries attended. The theme was ‘Cochrane for all - better evidence for better health decisions.’  It was a Patients Included event, co-designed, co-produced and co-presented by healthcare consumers.

This year’s Colloquium gala dinner was held at the National Museum of Scotland. Guests enjoyed their meal in the Grand Gallery, followed by traditional Scottish music, a ceilidh and a disco.

In order to guarantee their place at the dinner, guests were asked to make a charitable donation at the time of registration. These donations were promised to Social Bite, a national Social Enterprise in Scotland dedicated to tackling homelessness. We are delighted to have raised £9,880 for this cause.

Social Bite invite their homeless customers into their chain of sandwich shops to enjoy homemade food and hot drinks throughout the day. Among other ventures, they also hold a series of ‘social supporter’ events in the evenings, including nights for refugees and ‘women’s only’ nights for homeless women. Social Bite have also secured 800 homes for their first Housing Initiative. This plans to take a minimum of 800 people out of homelessness and into a proper home with fully funded support over the next 18 months.

After learning of the donation raised from the gala dinner, Jamie Boyd, Head of Event Fundraising at Social Bite passed on this message: 

“Your gift will make such a difference to the lives of the many homeless people we support.  Thanks to the generosity of our supporters, like yourselves, we are able to distribute over 100,000 items of food and hot drinks every year to Scotland’s most vulnerable people… Support such as yours gives the small team at Social Bite great hope that together we can end homelessness and we thank you once again”.

 To learn more about Social Bite watch this short video: