Charity: YCCC partner with Children’s Heart Surgery Fund; Style Uniforms donates an early Christmas present to Sheffield’s homeless; and more

DESIGNER and manufacturer of bespoke corporate uniforms, Style Uniforms has stepped in to make a difference to many of Sheffield’s homeless people this Christmas, with a donation of nearly 100 all-weather jackets to be distributed by the charity Homeless & Rootless at Christmas (HARC).

HARC runs a drop-in service each year; this year it is based at the Cathedral Archer Project on Campo Lane in the centre of the city.

It provides, food, clothing and a range of health services as well as entertainment. HARC will be open from the morning of 24th December until lunchtime on the 1st January, 2017. While all the other support services for the homeless in Sheffield close on Christmas Day, Boxing Day and New Year’s Day, HARC is the only one of its kind that stays open, thanks to the generosity of the volunteers that run the service.

Julie Roberts is a trustee of HARC and welcomed the support from Style Uniforms.

“This is an amazingly generous donation from Style Uniforms that will make a massive difference to the people we support who may be sleeping rough this winter – it could mean the difference between life and death for some of them and we can’t thank Style enough for the wonderful generosity,” she said.

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THE Yorkshire County Cricket Club and Yorkshire Cricket Foundation has announced Children’s Heart Surgery Fund (CHSF) as its new charity partner.
 
Over the next two years the club will work to raise awareness of CHSF, a charity supporting the Leeds Congenital Heart Unit at Leeds General Infirmary. CHSF’s support includes new equipment, accommodation for families, staffing, ward facilities and research.

Around 400 children have open heart surgery at the Heart Unit every year, with around 10,000 patients attending annually for help and treatment. The fund relies on the generous donations from supporters as it endeavours to support patients with Congenital Heart Disease (CHD) and their families through some of the most difficult times of their lives.

To mark the start of the partnership, some of the club’s senior players visited the Heart Unit at Leeds General Infirmary ahead of the festive period. Tim Bresnan, Jack Brooks, Ryan Sidebottom, Azeem Rafiq and Will Rhodes took time out of pre-season training to hand out gifts and meet patients, their families and the staff.

The club’s chief executive, Mark Arthur said: “This is a very exciting partnership and one where we genuinely believe we can help make a difference.

“We are looking forward to working with all of the dedicated and hardworking team at Children’s Heart Surgery Fund over the next two years and have huge admiration for their work. If we can help in any way, whether it be raising funds or awareness, then this partnership will have served its purpose.”

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IN November, Walker Morris announced Candlelighters as its 2017 chosen charity of the year and the fundraising is already off to an excellent start with over £3,094.50 raised so far.

Following on from this success, the Walker Morris team donned their festive Christmas jumpers to volunteer at the annual Candlelighters Christmas party.

The Christmas party is one of the biggest events of the year for Candlelighters, with all the children affected by childhood cancer, plus their siblings, invited to come and join in the festive fun.

The opportunity to volunteer was met with an enthusiastic response with more than a dozen Walker Morris employees, including partners Jeremy Moore and Nick Cannon, offering to help.

Sally-Ann Waller, of the Walker Morris Charity Committee, said: “Everyone from the Walker Morris contingent had a fantastic day and being able to see first-hand the incredible work that Candlelighters is involved in and what a difference this makes to the children and their families has given us all the more motivation for our ongoing fundraising efforts.”

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AS part of JCT600’s four year patronage of The Prince’s Trust, a team from Porsche Centre Leeds has risen to the challenge of attempting to raise £10,000 for the youth charity as part of its nationwide Million Makers competition.

The entrepreneurial challenge invites teams of employees from across the UK to come up with a fundraising business idea which they pitch to a Dragon’s Den-style panel of judges from The Prince’s Trust and from their own company.

The selected teams are then given £1,500 seed funding and challenged to raise at least £10,000 within a six month period.  In February, the winning team in each region will go forward to the national competition with the UK winner announced in March – the overall aim is for all the teams to collectively raise a grand total of £1m to transform the lives of disadvantaged young people across the country.

A team from JCT600’s specialist car division at Porsche Centre Leeds came up with the idea of producing a calendar – In Your Dreams 2017 – starring some of the family motor company’s most eye-catching cars as well as colleagues in suitably seasonal poses.  The photos range from colleagues ‘proposing’ to one another over a beautiful Porsche 918 Spyder for the February Valentine’s photo to the entire JCT600 board of directors in their scariest Halloween garb with a Bentley GT Speed for the October page.

The Million Makers team at Porsche Centre Leeds comprises Jo Thompson, brand financial controller; Terri-Michelle Haywood, marketing manager; Lauren Flatt, media assistant; Sarah Toye, accountant; Vicki Ingham, MA accountant; Nadia Siddique, accounts controller; Jordan Smith-Hirst, accountant; Beverley Bairstow, credit controller; Kelly Reynolds, sales administrator; and Richard Harrison, showroom manager.

As well as raising funds for The Prince’s Trust, the aim of the competition is also to act as a learning and development tool for employees, helping to build essential business skills and motivate staff.  The JCT600 team is competing against five other teams in the Yorkshire and Humberside region.

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INDIAN restaurant group Mumtaz has teamed up with charity Just Give to help feed the homeless across Leeds and Bradford this Christmas.

The restaurant on Leeds Dock, Leeds, will be throwing open its doors on Monday, December 19, to play host to around 80 homeless people to provide a Christmas dinner with a twist.

The special guests, who are all living in temporary hostel accommodation, have been invited by the Bradford-based charity which helps the homeless or those in dire poverty.

They will also be joined by Bradford MP Imran Hussain, the Lord Mayor of Bradford, Cllr Geoff Reid, and sporting celebrities from across the region.

Just Give head of events, Sajed Mahmood, said: “This is a collaboration of two cities working with the public and councils to help the plight of the poor and homeless.

“This is the first time we have teamed up with a well-known restaurant and it will be a real celebration of Christmas for those who perhaps didn’t have much to look forward to this year.”

Mumtaz director Rab Nawaz added: “We have come up with a special Turkey Tikka Masala for the day served with all the special side dishes and trimmings. It perhaps isn’t your traditional Christmas dinner but we know it will be just as tasty and we hope to create a real festive atmosphere on the day.”

Just Give is also busy fundraising to buy a mobile soup kitchen and shower bus for the region’s homeless to help provide support all year round.