Charity of the Year

Hughes Paddison has voted The Hollie Gazzard Trust as our Charity of the Year 2022-2023.

We would like to raise the maximum amount of funds, so every little donation will help us along the way.

Why did we choose to support this charity?

The Hollie Gazzard Trust is doing amazing work dedicated to raising the issue of domestic abuse and stalking. Unfortunately, domestic abuse is often a hidden crime that is not reported to the police. We hope to raise awareness of coercive control and encourage victims and their families to recognise this behaviour and take appropriate action.

What does the Hollie Gazzard Trust do?

Hollie Gazzard, Hollie Gazzard Trust The Hollie Gazzard Trust is a local Gloucestershire based charity with nationwide reach with a goal to prevent other victims and families having to experience what Hollie and her family had to go through.

In 2014, Hollie Gazzard, was a hair stylist working at a beauty salon in Gloucester. She had started dating Asher Maslin the previous year but had ended the relationship after he had been violent to her. 4 days later, at just 20 years old Hollie was stabbed to death in the Gloucester hair salon where she was working.

When Hollie first started dating Maslin, she and her family had no idea of his background. Unbeknownst to them, he had been arrested 23 times starting with domestic abuse and escalating to grievous bodily harm. Had Hollie known what he was really like she would never have wanted to get involved with him.

Following her horrific murder, her family – father Nick, mother Amanda and sister Chloe –wanted something positive to come out of losing Hollie. This spurred them to set up the Trust not only to help other victims but to raise funds to support young people. Hollie had suffered from domestic abuse, violence and stalking in the time leading up to her death and tackling these issues is at the forefront of the work they do.

The aim of the Hollie Gazzard Trust is to help save lives by building individual and community resilience to domestic abuse. They achieve this in three ways:

Raising Awareness
From helping young people understand the dangers of unhealthy relationships and what this can lead to, using Hollie’s tragedy as an example. Keeping subscribers informed on the issues around domestic abuse and stalking via the monthly Hollie Gazzette and social media platforms. There are also various fundraising events throughout the year, such as a Golf Day, Annual Dinner and Walk4Hollie.
Delivering workshops
Helping people create positive, happy and safe relationships, free from abuse. They do this by running educational workshops in schools, colleges and universities, and in the workplace and for community groups. Each workshop is tailored to their specific audience and is age appropriate, from primary school through to adults.
Prevention with the free Hollie Guard App
The Hollie Gazzard Trust hopes to prevent other people from going through what Hollie did before her death. That’s why you can download your own free personal safety app, Hollie Guard in the hope this will help individuals experiencing domestic abuse and stalking to stay safe. Download 'Hollie Guard' from your app store.

How common is domestic abuse in the UK?

To better understand the scale of the problem, we have taken a snapshot of the abuse statistics year ending March 2021. We must always remember that with domestic abuse being a hidden crime, we can never fully gauge the true extent of the problem.

Domestic abuse prevalence and trends, England and Wales: year ending March 2021

The police recorded a total of 1,459,663 domestic abuse-related incidents and crimes in England and Wales in the year ending March 2021.
Of these, 845,734 were recorded as domestic abuse-related crimes, an increase of 6% from the previous year, representing 18% of all offences recorded by the police in the year ending March 2021.
Estimates from our most recent Crime Survey for England and Wales year ending March 2020 show 5.5% of adults aged 16 to 74 years (2.3 million) experienced domestic abuse in the 12 months prior.

As a Gloucestershire based charity, Hughes Paddison feel our fundraising will provide something great for the local community as well as all families affected by domestic abuse across the country.

Want to get involved?

There are loads of exciting fundraising events happening in 2022, all of which can be found on the Hollie Gazzard Trust – Events page, below are just a few ideas, but of course you can always create your own as well.

Walk4Hollie on Sunday 15^th May – The very special annual walk to remember the life of Hollie.
RunThrough Cheltenham - Sunday 12th June - Cheltenham Racecourse. Details coming soon...
Purple HollieDay – Friday 8^th July - Purple HollieDay is the Hollie Gazzard Trust’s annual day to celebrate Hollie Gazzard’s life and takes place each year in July, Hollie’s birth month. Hollie was a fun-loving young person, with a zest for life and a passion for hairdressing. #GOPURPLE
Hollie Gazzard Trust Golf Day – Taking place at Lilley Brook Golf Club on the 8th of September 2022 at 11 am.
Very special Annual Ball - Friday 25th November - Make sure to Save the Date! Details to follow...

We are very keen to get started with events, and raising as many funds as possible for the charity, so if you’d like to join us why not drop our fundraising team an email.

To Donate

We’d really appreciate any support, either through donating or sponsoring our team in the many fundraising events.

We’ll be keeping you updated with how we’re getting on throughout the year on our news page and on our social media channels.

Get in touch