Sainsburys Blackhall are proud to have supported Dorothy and Joanna Bissett with their fundraising for Breakthrough Breast Cancer.
The ladies had organised a sponsored 5K run through Inverleith Park on 13 September to raise funds for Breakthrough breast cancer and Sainsburys Bakery Manager Scott McDowell from our Blackhall store made and donated 150 pink cupcakes to raise funds too!
Gail, Sainsbury’s Blackhall
LifeCare is holding a Craft Fair on Saturday 18 October from 10:30am – 4.30pm here at Stockbridge House, 2 Cheyne Street, Edinburgh EH4 1JB (just off Raeburn Place).
There will be a wide range of crafts on offer from fused glass, crocheted jewellery and Harris Tweed bags to soap, bath bombs and ceramic creatures. Entry is free with tea/coffee and snacks available.
Come and take a look around while supporting a good cause. The Craft Fair will raise money for LifeCare, a charity which provides services to help older people and those with dementia to lead fulfilling and independent lives.
Save The Children has launched a video that puts viewers in the position of someone who is unable to read as part of their Read On. Get On literacy campaign.
The campaign has been launched by a coalition of charities, businesses and authors to encourage professionals and parents to help children improve their reading, and Save the Children‘s film that shows the impact that not being able to read well can have on someone’s life.
Called Ten Minutes a Day Could Change Everything, the film illustrates the importance of reading and the positive difference adults can make to young children’s lives.
The charity has also launched an online petition that calls on politicians to ensure by 2025 that every child in the UK is a confident reader at age 11. It has also been promoting the campaign on Twitter using the hashtag #ReadonGeton, and several popular YouTube bloggers have made videos to show their support.
Justin Forsyth, chief executive of Save the Children, said: “Read On. Get On is not just about teachers, charities and politicians – it’s about galvanising the nation so that parents, grandparents and volunteers play their part in teaching children to read. We want every child to be given a fair and equal chance to learn to read well, regardless of their background.”
A team of eight from Port of Leith Housing Association (PoLHA) took part in this year’s Pedal for Scotland event on 7 September.
The 47 mile cycling event from Glasgow to Edinburgh saw the team – John Murray, George McLeod, Ian Treger, Scott McAndrew, Neil Donald, Onder Ozdemir, Wendy Farmer and Stephen Allen – cross the finish line in 3 hours 45 minutes.
The PoLHA team raised money for Tartan Army Children’s Charity, which supports disadvantaged children in Scotland and will donate half of the proceeds (£200) to Homestart Leith which provides care to local families.
Neil Donald, ICT Manager at PoLHA who organised the team, said: “We have some keen cyclists at PoLHA so it made sense for us to jump on our bikes and raise money for a good cause.”
New Caledonian Woodlands needs your vote for Inverleith Park project
New Caledonian Woodlands has been shortlisted for the Bank of Scotland Community Fund 2014 in the Edinburgh North category – and needs your support!
By encouraging the public to vote, we have a chance to be awarded a grant of up to £3,000 from Bank of Scotland to enable us to continue doing good work in the community.
New Caledonian Woodlands are an Edinburgh-based charity that exist to enhance Scotland’s natural environment, inspire positive environmental behaviour change and improve mental and physical well-being in our community. We deliver a range of projects combining environmental sustainability with education about wider environmental issues, whilst utilising environmental activities to achieve improvements in mental and physical well-being.
Over the course of a year we work with around 100 referred participants and 1000 volunteers in a range of programmes to benefit those struggling with their mental well-being and encourage community ownership of caring for local woodlands.
We educate people about the important role they need to play in a range of environmental issues, from habitat conservation to climate change and carbon footprint reduction.
Participants on our projects work together in a friendly and relaxing atmosphere,
in a setting that benefits individuals in terms of self-esteem growth, learning transferable skills and community involvement.
Currently, our site located in Inverleith Park lacks adequate work space for our mental health participants to carry out their projects and limits the amount of individuals we can work with at any given time. We have plans to greatly enhance the space into an environmentally sustainable facility to accommodate and expand on the various mental health, employability and environmental volunteer projects we currently offer.
Being awarded this grant would help us put some tangible changes into place, the first being an outdoor Iron Age roundhouse to be used as a sheltered area for our mental health participants to hand craft products which they will then go on to sell.
Andy Ross, coordinator and founder of New Caledonian Woodlands, said: “The Bank of Scotland Community Fund could give us an amazing opportunity to build workshop space in our Edinburgh site that meets the needs of our Fruitful Woods and Good Wood mental health and employability projects. An Iron Age roundhouse will be built by our project participants and then used by them as a dry workshop space to carry out a range of activities – from making baskets to wooden spoons to small pieces of furniture. We anticipate that the roundhouse will be used by 80 participants per year from our mental health and employability projects, and will be a part of their recovery journey.”
The Bank of Scotland Community Fund was set up to help local people across Scotland have a positive impact at the hearts of their communities by giving grants to 232 local good causes in 58 Scottish communities.
Four good causes in each community have been shortlisted and Bank of Scotland is inviting everyone to vote for the causes they’d most like to support.
Members of the public can vote for their preferred community group on-line, by SMS or Twitter, or in a Bank of Scotland branch from 2 September to 10 October 2014. The local good cause that receives most votes in each community will receive an award of £3,000, with the other groups receiving £2,000, £1,000 or £500 depending on the votes received.
You can find out more about the Community Fund and New Caledonian Woodlands and cast your vote by visiting the Bank of Scotland Community Fund website at:
www.BankofScotland.com/communityfund
Voting for the 2014 Community Fund is open until Friday 10 October.
Under cover of darkness, in the heart of the City the abundant natural landscape of ‘the Botanics’ will come alive this winter when the gates are opened to visitors at night-time. Who knows how many pairs of little glowing ‘eyes’ will be keeping watch over them as the Garden sheds some light on its after-dark secrets?
This November, visitors to the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh (RBGE) will be invited to enter the Garden after dark for a spectacular outdoor event featuring a magical combination of light and nature. It is the first outdoor light experience of its kind to be organised by the Garden.
Night in the Garden, which starts on 30 October and runs until 23 November, has been created by the Botanics and Edinburgh-based Unique Events, in association with Scottish light artist Malcolm Innes and his colleague Euan Winton. The artists’ vision means that night-time visitors will be able to make their way through a one kilometre route full of light and shadow and experience the Botanics in an entirely new manner, with interactive stations and a few unexpected surprises along the way.
The outdoor trail will use the Garden’s favourite features, such as the famous Victorian Glasshouses and Pond, as the backdrop for extraordinary light effects. Visitors can watch ‘the sun’ set inside the Palm House, see a host of sparkling lights suspended over water and enjoy enchanting illuminations that bring the indoors outside. They will also have the opportunity to create their own light show by manipulating some of the installations themselves.
Heather Jackson, RBGE’s Director of Enterprise, explained: “This is a chance for those who know and love the Edinburgh Garden, as well as new visitors of course, to see it in a completely different light – quite literally.
“We have over 700,000 daytime visitors a year and we are often asked if it’s possible to come at night, so we thought we’d come up with something unique to create a truly enchanting experience.
“The planned light installations by Malcolm promise to be spectacular, and by combining the wonder of light with the secrets of the trees and nature we have in abundance, it will certainly be a magical evening to remember for our night-time visitors.”
Malcolm Innes said: “The Garden at night is already a magical place, as some of the most recognisable features softly merge into the darkness. It is this new reality that we will be manipulating to create installations that span the range from grand spectacle, through romantic and beautiful, to mysterious and tiny.
“The kind of hard edged, simplified geometry we learn at school is seldom discussed in relation to the natural world, but when the two are brought together, the visual effect can be magical. Come and join us and bring the family as we turn the world inside out and make the invisible, visible.”
The event will be open to members of the public with an hour-long experience allowing visitors to participate in something that they have never seen before, with different parts of the route being jaw-droppingly spectacular, some romantic and pretty, and others just a wee bit spooky – although not enough to put the kids off. Night in the Garden is an event for all the family.
The experience is being delivered by RBGE and Unique Events, Scotland’s leading independent events company; organisers of the capital’s famous Edinburgh’s Hogmanay celebrations and large-scale outdoor festivals and events. ‘Botanic Lights’ installations are designed by Malcolm Innes and Euan Winton of Edinburgh Napier University, and Leith-based Black Light is working with the partners to deliver lighting installation technical support.
Pete Irvine of Unique Events said: “Unique Events is delighted to be involved in this exciting and innovative project. The Botanics is one of Edinburgh’s best loved places to visit in any season, but we will never have experienced it like this.”
Visitors to Night in the Garden will be required to purchase tickets in advance for a specific date and time slot. Tickets are now on sale – for details and further informaton about the event, visit www.rbge.org.uk/botaniclights.
And if the Botanics lights experience appeals, you may want to know about this charity event too:
The Enchanted Forest, Perthshire’s multi-award winning sound and light show, has announced that it has released an additional 1500 tickets for Thursday 2 October when it will hold a dedicated charity event, the proceeds from which will be split equally between Children’s Hospice Association Scotland (CHAS) and Autism Scotland.
Over 45,0000 tickets went on sale for The Enchanted Forest’s 13th event, elemental, in June and organisers are already predicting a sell-out show this year with demand for tickets already up by 37%. The release of additional tickets will be welcomed by fans of the show and by supporters of the charities alike.
Graham Brown, chairman of the Highland Perthshire Community Interest Company that runs The Enchanted Forest, commented: “The Community Interest Company is, for the first time, in a strong position to give back to the local community and we have selected two charities that are very active in this area.
“It is marvellous to be able to assist Scottish Autism and CHAS with a charity night on the 2nd October and we wish them well and hope that they will benefit greatly from this unique fundraising opportunity.”
Derek Allan, producer of The Enchanted Forest added: “This is an exciting development for the show. As a community based event, we are very committed to giving something back and the two charities chosen both do exceptionally important work to support families and children across Scotland.
“Every year we get very positive feedback from customers whose children are affected by autism, and the profound impact the show has on them. For other families who are facing challenges, such as those supported by CHAS, the show offers an opportunity to enjoy time together and a break from their normal routine. We are proud to be giving both Scottish Autism and CHAS a helping hand.”
Karen Wilson, fundraising manager for Scottish Autism said: “We are delighted to be selected as one of the charities to benefit from this event. This is a fantastic opportunity to raise the profile of our services which support people with autism and their families throughout Scotland. We are also looking forward to bringing along some of our service users to enjoy the experience on the night.”
Alison Rennie, CHAS Fundraiser added: “We’re very excited to have been chosen as one of the charities to benefit from The Enchanted Forest’s first ever charity evening. It promises to be a magical event and all the funds received by CHAS will help us to continue to provide vital support to babies, children and young people with life-shortening conditions.”
The 2014 show, elemental, sees the return of the creative team that put together last year’s successful show, with lighting design by Kate Bonney and Simon Hayes, sound design and composition by RJ McConnell, and orchestral compositions by Jon Beales.
The Enchanted Forest takes place from Friday 3 – Sunday 26 October 2014 at Faskally Wood near Pitlochry.
Tickets for the Charity Night on Thursday 2 October are available by visiting www.enchantedforest.org.uk/charity
We started to collect for Granton Baptist church at the end of January and it has proven to be a great success. Every Tuesday a member of Granton Baptist Church comes along to collect the donations of food so kindly donated by Sainsburys customers and colleagues.
This is Sainsbury’s colleague Lesley with one week’s worth of donations!
Gail
Sainsbury’s Blackhall
THE recent suicide of the much-loved actor Robin Williams highlighted how suicide can affect anyone. Sport can have a positive impact on mental health and wellbeing, so a five-a-side football tournament will kick off World Suicide Prevention Week in Edinburgh next Saturday (6 September).
The Choose Life Challenge Cup will run from 9.30am until 12.30pm at Gracemount Leisure Centre on 2 Gracemount Drive with sixteen teams from Edinburgh, Midlothian, West Lothian and Dundee taking part. Among this particpants are two ladies teams from Edinburgh who will be copeting in the tournament for the first time.
Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill will be there to present the trophy and other prizes.
Event organiser John Murphy, a project worker with Scottish charity Health in Mind, believes the Choose Life Challenge Cup is a fantastic event as it offers a comfortable space for guys to get together, reduces isolation and promotes a sense of belonging.
John said: “So many young men find it hard to talk about their feelings and in 2013, there were 795 suicides recorded in Scotland, with the rate for men more than three times that of women.”
John said the event provides a great opportunity for people to find out about the issues and the services available locally. “If there’s someone you know who you think might be considering suicide; ask them and be willing to listen and encourage them to get help – you could help save their life. Alternatively if you are feeling suicidal, don’t hide it; find someone you trust and talk to them.”
The Choose Life Campaign is part of the national strategy and action plan to prevent suicide in Scotland.
The partners supporting the Choose Life Challenge Cup – Lothian Five-a-Side Football Tournament are NHS Lothian, East Lothian Council, The City of Edinburgh Council, Midlothian and West Lothian Councils.
Toy convoy leaves on Friday
Edinburgh Direct Aid who are the group behind the collection – they have been amazed by the response so far.
However they tell me they are in desperate need of:
These items will be head to Gaza for the children
They also need:
These will be used for packaging the items for shipment
Do you know anyone who can help?
Maybe you have a few things to donate?
DEADLINE is FRIDAY at 5pm
*Note – Toys will also still be accepted
The World’s Biggest Coffee Morning, held on Friday September 26, is a great excuse to catch up with your favourite people and raise some money for a good cause. And it’s really easy too – just ask your guests to make a donation for the coffee and cake you serve.
Whether it’s steaming mugs and biscuits, or homemade cakes and your best cups, it really doesn’t matter how simple or fancy you make it. The only thing that really matters is the treat of getting everyone together and knowing that every coffee and cake you share with your friends will help someone affected by cancer get the support they need to feel more in control of life.
Last year 3,642 people living in Central Scotland called the Macmillan Support Line for cancer information, advice or simply a chat. And so far, there are 208 Macmillan nurses in the region providing expert support for people affected by cancer, and their families. But there’s still more needed and that’s where your coffee morning comes in. Every pound you raise will mean more people can get the Macmillan support they need.
So come on, let’s make time for a treat this September. It all starts with ordering your free Coffee Morning Kit, bursting with goodies to make raising money really simple and fun.
The World’s Biggest Coffee Morning takes place on Friday 26 September – but you can hold yours whenever suits you best.
Send for your free kit today – www.coffee.macmillan.org.uk
call 0845 602 1246 or text SHARE to 70550
