Member Article

Kind-Hearted National Lottery Winners Spread Christmas Cheer in Lancashire

National Lottery winners have been spreading some festive joy in Lancashire to those who need it most.

Natalie and Andrew Cunliffe, from Blackpool, who scooped £1M on a National Lottery Scratchcard in 2016, delivered 18 hampers to Lancashire’s older people’s charity, Age Concern Central Lancashire.

Figures from a public health report suggest there are 35,000 lonely and isolated older people in Lancashire. In a bid to tackle this, the winter warmer hampers were given out from one of the charity’s dementia facilities, Charnley Fold Day Support Centre in Bamber Bridge.

For Natalie, this was her second time visiting the charity, following last year when she was part of a team of National Lottery winners who formed a Christmas Elf Hamper task force to create 100 luxury hampers for Age Concern Central Lancashire carers.

Suzanne Carr, CEO of Age Concern Central Lancashire, said, “For the second year running, we’ve been fortunate to welcome National Lottery winners Natalie and Andrew back for Christmas. We’re so grateful for all of the kind and hard work that goes into putting these generous festive hampers together, and even more thankful for the smiles it brings to so many of our customers’ faces.”

Natalie added, “It really is the time of year for giving back and we couldn’t think of a more deserving charity than Age Concern Central Lancashire. With all the work they do to support people living with dementia all year round, we wanted to make Christmas that bit more special.

“We really hope the hampers bring joy to everyone who receives them this festive season!”

Age Concern Central Lancashire previously received £144,000 from the Coronavirus Community Support Fund, distributed by the National Lottery Community Fund, the largest funder of community activity in the UK. The grant covered the cost of running frontline services put in place during the pandemic.

By playing any National Lottery game, players generate more than £30M each week for National Lottery-funded projects. This money helps support everything from the local charity making a difference where you live through to helping our nation’s athletes win Olympic and Paralympic gold medals. To date, over £45BN has been raised and distributed to National Lottery Good Causes through more than 660,000 individual grants.

Thanks to National Lottery players, over £1.2BN is being used by charities and organisations affected by the impact of the coronavirus outbreak, which includes over £600M in funding support from the National Lottery Community Fund which is being used to help groups best placed to support people and communities through the crisis.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Elliott Ward .