York company EPH Creative recently held a family fun day at their premises near Wetherby…
…and Lollipop was the lucky beneficiary of funds raised on the day! We are so happy to receive such an unexpected donation, which will help us continue to plan more exciting experiences for our members in the coming months! EPH Creative are the UK’s leading supplier of props and furniture for events. They have a huge warehouse of amazing props that they design, manufacture and hire out for events, photoshoots, exhibitions and attractions! Matt East, co-founder of EPH creative explains why they chose Lollipop:
“My name is Matt, and I am the father of Oscar East, who has been attending the York monthly meet-ups for quite some time. Oscar loves these meetings, enjoying the chance to connect, learn, and receive support from people who truly understand him. After meeting your impressive team at the Christmas party in Bishopthorpe last year, I was inspired to recommend Lollipop as a charity to support at my company’s annual fundraiser on April 26th. The suggestion was enthusiastically accepted, and I am thrilled to share that our event was a great success, raising £1000 for Lollipop.”
A huge thank you to everyone at EPH Creative for their generosity!
We are thrilled to announce that Lollipop has been selected as the chosen charity for this year’s Acaster Malbis May Festival, taking place on Saturday 18th May.
It looks all set to be a fabulous fun-filled occasion with live music, street food, bars, dancing, stalls, activities and entertainment for all the family! Huge thanks to everyone on the Acaster Malbis Community Events Team for choosing to support Lollipop with the proceeds.
See the flier below for full details of what you can expect on the day. Events tickets and charity raffle tickets ON SALE NOW at https://shop.acasterevents.co.uk/products so pop it in your diary and give yourself something to look forward to this summer! We can’t wait to see you there! 🙂
Delighted to announce that we smashed our fundraising target for our Christmas Prize Draw and Raffle, raising a whopping £1360! MASSIVE thanks to all the local businesses who donated prizes and to everyone who bought tickets. CONGRATULATIONS too to all the lucky winners!
If that wasn’t AMAZING enough, we’ve just found out that we’ve been successful in not one but two grant applications which means that we will receive:
All of this money will go towards funding even more exciting activities to encourage our members to try something new, express themselves freely and realise their true potential!
It definitely feels like all of our Christmases have come at once and we are SO incredibly grateful for everyone’s support!
Lollipop has been part of the Co-op Local Community Fund for the past year…and what a year!
Between 23 October 2022 and 21 October 2023, Co-op Members could officially support Lollipop by buying selected Co-op branded products and services. We were officially linked to the York community of stores but members could raise money for us by shopping at any Co-op store across the UK.
We were truly delighted to receive a WHOPPING £3018.91 from the scheme and would like to reiterate our HUGE THANKS to Co-op members and the Co-op Community Fund for supporting us and their local community.
Here’s Anna and Deb showing their appreciation at the Hull Road branch earlier this month 🙂
Tickets are now on sale for our fabulous festive prize draw and raffle! Once again, we have some fantastic prizes on offer and are immensely grateful to the participating organisations for their generous donations. Details of all the prizes you can win are listed below…
The easiest way to enter the prize draw is to visit our GoFundMe Prize Draw page. Tickets are £1 each. Simply donate to the page to buy entries into the draw. For example, donate £10 to buy 10 tickets. GoFundMe do not allow us to include all the information about the draw and prizes on our GoFundMe fundraising page, so all the details are further down this page!
Please put your name and contact details on the donation to ensure we know who to enter into the draw! We will only contact you using these details if you have won a prize. Help us to sell as many tickets as possible by sharing this link with your family and friends!
Paper tickets are available from Cheryl (parentsupport@lollipopyork.org.uk). Please email her to request tickets to be sent to you in the post. Tickets will also be available to buy at the Christmas party itself on 9th December.
Prizes
Thank you to all the Yorkshire businesses who have kindly donated prizes this year to help raise vital funds for Lollipop!
A HUGE thank-you to Tesco and everyone who used their little blue tokens to vote for Lollipop in the Tesco Community Grants (now Stronger Starts) scheme. We are thrilled to have received the most votes meaning we get a WHOPPING £1500! Here’s some of the Lollipop team being presented with the all-important cheque at Tesco Clifton Moor!
A massive thank you to Emma Moore for choosing to raise money for Lollipop and The Island by running over 200 miles in the GB Ultras ‘Race across Scotland’ in August 2024.
We’re totally in awe of Emma’s strength and stamina and very grateful to her for taking part in this incredible challenge to help raise vital funds for us. We’ll be following her training progress and wishing her all the very best every step of the way!
It was a magical day with an absolutely amazing atmosphere and loads of support from the crowds. We even managed to win one of our heats and get our team photo in the York Press.
The Good Ship Lollipop completed its voyage in the summer, but sponsorship for the Dragon Boat Race stayed open until 1 September so we only recently received confirmation of how much money we raised (drum roll…) an AMAZING £2450.59, two thirds of which (£1,633.73)will come direct to Lollipop!
A special thank you to everyone who supported Lollipop, and helped the York Rotary Dragon Boat Challenge 2023 raise a record £87,200 for over 35 local charities. Deb and Cheryl were very proud to attend the awards presentation evening at York Mansion House on Thursday 26 October to celebrate everyone’s achievements!
If you’d like to see more great pics of our team in action on the River Ouse, click here to visit our Facebook page.
On 24 June we hosted our pop-up stall and café at St Crux Parish Hall. Lots of locals and tourists came to browse our books, plants and bric-a-brac or pop in for a tasty treat!
HUGE thanks to everyone who:
stopped by to show their support;
baked delicious cakes or donated items for sale;
volunteered on what felt like the hottest day of the year so far!
Your efforts were SO worth it as together we raised an amazing £803!
Lollipop members Hannah Wray and Phoebe Rankin have set themselves a BSL challenge to raise funds for Lollipop! We are excited and proud that Hannah and Phoebe have thought to do something like this for Lollipop and we will update their story regularly, here and on our social media pages!
Hannah and Phoebe go to school together as well as attend Lollipop, and everything they have done is their own work. They have decided to set themselves the challenge of learning 250 signs between them in just 2 weeks! So far they have raised a brilliant £465, totally smashing their original £200 goal! Hannah’s mum, Helen, explained
“they chose you as the charity they wanted to support and wrote the blurb together during a play date. They then had a 90 mins face time call to organise what signs they would like to learn together. They have being doing this as a surprise for Miss Rose at school whose family are also members of Lollipop. She has worked with them to support a deaf awareness activity in school. Its so exciting. They are doing really well. We are signing every night to learn the next theme and topic! “
We love it when our members take on challenges and show us what amazing ideas and initiative they have! Well done Phoebe and Hannah, you have already far exceeded your target and your efforts mean a lot to everyone at Lollipop!
Lollipop is primarily funded through The National Lottery Community Fund. We are also funded by BBC Children In Need with further support from many local and national organisations.
