Norwegian financier and investor Christen Sveaas once again shared some of his wealth during the Christmas holiday season, donating wine to 11 nursing homes around Oslo, to spread some cheer to their elderly residents.
The funds for the wine come from the charitable fund Sveaas set up in 1990 in honor of his father, lawyer Anders Sveaas, and his grandfather, consul Anders Sveaas. The fund has supported various projects in the public interest, including the restoration of the historic property Bogstad Gård and a project that sends clowns to the children’s wards of local hospitals.
Sveaas himself is known as an astute wine expert and collector, who decided that nursing home residents should be treated to some good wine with their meals on special occasions. The fund, known as Anders Sveaas’ Allmennyttige Fond, has sent wine to around 50 nursing homes, with cases doled out in proportion to their number of residents.
The project this year cost around NOK 120,000, reported newspaper Aftenposten, and brought smiles to the faces of women like Aud Ragde and Kirsten Nilsen, as nursing home staff poured red wine at a pre-Christmas luncheon. “Just a half-glass for me, though,” cautioned Nilsen.
The fund has donated wine for the past five years. “This year we picked out 11 nursing homes to receive the wine,” Annette Vibe Gregersen, administrator of the fund, told Aftenposten. “This is just meant as a nice gift for Oslo’s sick and elderly. The goal is to spread some cheer during Christmas.”
The nursing homes were selected by a board member of the fund, Torhild Munthe-Kaas, and are then contacted and asked if they’d like to serve wine to their residents. “Some say they received enough wine to allow some cheer at Easter time, too,” said Gregersen.
The gift of wine came just before a report last week that some understaffed nursing homes struggle to care for all their patients, leading some of them to be ignored or neglected. Lena Sand of the Akerselva Sykehjem, said she was delighted to receive some good news for her residents. “When someone wants to contribute to the nursing homes, it’s wonderful,” she told Aftenposten. “It’s always nice when someone thinks about our elderly.”
newsinenglish.no/Nina Berglund
