Candlelighters Trust

Happy New Year! ✨ As we step into 2025, we look forward to another year of providing the best support we can to families and leading more groundbreaking research and awareness for childhood cancer. Thank you for your support in 2024, hope to see you soon. 💚

£1,844 raised at the Living North Yorkshire Christmas Fair! 🎄❄️ We were super excited to be chosen as the Living North charity partner for their Christmas Fair this year. The event was held over four days at York Racecourse and Becki, Sean, and Iain from Candlelighters all attended, along with some of our brilliant volunteers who came along to help. We hosted a tombola which proved to be very popular and sold our brand new merchandise - all while raising awareness for our work supporting children with cancer. 🌟 A big thank you to Living North for having us! 💚

People of Leeds, we need your help! 📣 We’ve been selected for the customer vote for a Tesco Community Grant. This scheme gives charities like ours grants of up to £1,500. Tesco customers can vote in-store with their tokens to determine how much funding we get, so please, please support us when you next shop at Tesco! 💫 To vote, you just need to make a purchase in store and drop your blue token in the Candlelighters container. You can place your votes at the Tesco stores in: Leeds Seacroft Leeds Boar Lane Leeds Briggate Armley Leeds Clarence Dock Leeds Leeds Bridgewater Place Leeds Bond Street Leeds Beeston St Pauls St Leeds Leeds Calverley If we are successful in securing a grant, our funding will be put towards Champ’s Pantry, providing food and snacks for children in hospital. Voting is open until 12th January 2025.

Wishing you a very Merry Christmas! 🎄 Thank you for all your generous donations and fundraising this holiday season. You have made some Christmas miracles come true. 🎁 🎄 A quick note to let you all know our social media accounts will not be monitored from today, 24 December, until 2 January. Our family support centre will also be closed during this time. The support teams at the hospital will continue to bring festive fun over Christmas, thanks to all your donations and support. May your day be filled with joy, love, and peace from all of us at Candlelighters. 💚

Christmas is right around the corner and sadly some children will spend it in hospital. They won't be able to leave a snack out for Santa or wake up in their own bed on Christmas Day. But with your help, they can still enjoy Christmas fun and magic. ✨ Our elves are getting ready to deliver Christmas Eve boxes to the children we support who will be in hospital on Christmas Day. Could you donate £25 and fund a Christmas Eve box for a child in hospital? 🎁 Your donation can help bring smiles and cheer when they're needed most. Visit our website here to help spread some Christmas magic to children with cancer https://lnkd.in/eK8QG43 💛

#SupporterSunday 💕 We'd like to thank our amazing charity partner, LDC in Leeds, for kindly donating £3,500 to sponsor our Day of Memories event in October. Day of Memories is a very special event that provides families a chance to remember and reflect, and to celebrate the children who have sadly lost their lives to cancer. The afternoon included activities, poems, shared memories, and candle lighting. We can't thank the amazing team at LDC enough for their continued support and for sponsoring this very special event for our families. The team in Leeds have been supporting Candlelighters since 2019 and have raised a massive £46,554 in that time! As well as fundraising, the team also get stuck in and volunteer at our family events. Thank you, LDC !💚

We would like to wish a very special Merry Christmas and a big thank you to the companies that support our bereaved families with memory making items. 🎄 All these beautiful pieces are very precious to our families. They help provide closeness to their child and, in time, comfort. They provide us with an amazing service, showing compassion and empathy to our families, and understanding the importance of each piece. A heartfelt thank you to: 🌟 Viz Biz Design in Wakefield has been framing our handprint canvases for seven years now, giving the families an amazing choice of frames often in the child's favourite colour. 🌟 Leela Rose Life Casting & Keepsakes has been doing our memory or memorial hand casts for a couple of years, meeting at the families' homes or at the hospital. 🌟 The Little Biscuit Pottery Painting Studio provides us with pottery for our families to paint or put finger prints / hand prints on, turning them into beautiful keepsakes. 🌟 3 to thread has been making memory bears and cushions using the child's own clothes to create unique keepsakes for parents and siblings, tailoring the design to the child's favourite animal. 🌟 Button and Bean provides beautiful keepsake jewellery from our children's finger / hand / footprints. We are incredibly proud to have such lovely business owners and talented craftspeople contribute to the community at Candlelighters. 💚 If you would like to support activities for bereaved families we welcome your donations. Please visit our website for more information.

Your support at Christmas 🎄 Thanks to your amazing donations, we've been providing lots of festive support to families affected by childhood cancer. Earlier this month we held our annual wreath-making workshops for mums and grandparents. 40 mums and grandparents attended the groups held at Swarthmore and Mowgli Street Food. These groups are an opportunity for family members to catch up and support each other, whilst taking some time for themselves. Giving parents and grandparents space to be with other people who 'get it' is hugely important - especially at what can be a very hard time of year. 💚 💬 One Grandma said, ''Thank you - it was a lovely morning. It was my first time and I found everyone so welcoming and supportive'." We've also had lots of festive activities at the hospital to entertain patients and bring some festive cheer! There have been plenty of crafts and activities provided - not to mention finding out what the cheeky elves have been up to each day! 💫 Last week we also sent out Christmas grants to 214 families. This vital support helps to ease some of the additional pressures families face at this time of year. Thank you for your donations which make all of this support possible. If you'd like to help continue providing support to children and families at Christmas and beyond, you can donate on our website. 🌟

Is your organisation ready to make a difference this Christmas? 🎅🏼 We may have already reached our goal for the The Big Give Christmas Challenge but there is still plenty of time to bring Christmas joy and support to Candlelighters this festive season by becoming a Snowflake for Candlelighters. ❄️ Businesses can sponsor a snowflake which will be displayed on the Christmas tree at our family support centre. Your investments make a tremendous impact on our families. Georgia, mum to Albie was so grateful for our support around the holidays. She says, “The Christmas grant meant that we could treat the children for Christmas as Christmas is the last thing on your mind when your child has cancer.” Visit our website now to make Christmas miracles come true. 💚 Please get in touch if you would like a sponsor pack with more information to see the other benefits your organisation receives for supporting us. Please speak to our Partnerships Executive, Iain, at iain.bh@candlelighters.org.uk or visit our website at https://lnkd.in/e-xxHtzi

#SupporterSunday 💕 Thank you to Bradford Forster Academy who recently raised £904 in memory of one of their pupils, Paris Somma. The school sold Candlelighters merchandise and baked goods to reach their fantastic total. They had their own 'Purple for Paris' selfie board – in honour of Paris’s favourite colour. 💜 This marks their third year of fundraising for Candlelighters and they're also planning to take on the three peaks next year to raise vital funds to help other young people with cancer. We are so grateful for Bradford Forster's ongoing support and it's lovely to see pupils and staff coming together to honour Paris in this special way. 💫