Busy summer for the Inverness-shire & Western Isles branch of SSAFA

16 September 2026

The Inverness-shire & Western Isles branch of SSAFA has had a busy summer 2026 of fundraising and community engagement. Members of the branch team braved weather of the usual dramatic Scottish variety in many locations, as well as forest fires.

The branch attended these events:

June:

  • Queen's Own Highlanders (Seaforth and Camerons) annual Regimental Gathering, Inverness

July:

  • Inverness Highland Games

August:

  • Celebration of the Centuries re-enactment event, Fort George
  • Nairn Highland Games
  • Kinloss Running Festival, Kinloss Barracks

The team at each event was composed of various combinations of these branch volunteers who put in a lot of effort and time to support SSAFA over the course of the summer, and who all had a fantastic time (except when rain and wind put a dampener on things!):

  • Beverley Cartwright, Anna Masson, Antony McCord, Jimmy Greig, Susan Gray, Liz Henderson, Al Kendall and Florence Jah

The main activities the volunteers carried out were:

  • Supporting the events and promoting SSAFA with a stall
  • Talking to many people in the veterans and military community in Scotland about SSAFA
  • Fundraising with raffles (prizes included bottles of donated whisky) and collecting donations
  • £840 was raised in donated funds for SSAFA at the Nairn and Fort George events
  • At the Kinloss Running Festival (which the branch helped to start up in 2024 and has participated in every year since), the SSAFA team supported the event and handed out medals - two charities always split the funds raised at the event and this year the chosen charities were the Army Benevolent Fund and SSAFA, with SSAFA receiving £2866. 

Kinloss Running Festival: https://www.facebook.com/kinloss.running.festival
Army Benevolent Fund: https://armybenevolentfund.org/