Members of Allithwaite Bowling Club proved themselves good sports when they rose to the challenge of supporting Rosemere Cancer Foundation despite the lockdown.
At their AGM last October, they chose Rosemere Cancer Foundation as their 2020 charity of the year but the club’s closure because of the coronavirus pandemic put paid to their fundraising plans.
Not be outdone though, they managed to amass a collective donation of £853.75 after some 23 members decided to set themselves personal challenges to help them through time stuck indoors. Other members and friends also made personal donations.
Among the challenges undertaken were walking the equivalent mileage around the garden of the Coast to Coast route, which brought in £250 in sponsorship, losing weight, completing three crosswords a day, making and selling jam, sending 20 postcards, learning the piano and telephoning people living on their own.
Julie Hemondhalgh, Rosemere Cancer Foundation’s South Cumbria fundraising co-ordinator, said: “What an inventive lot of genuinely good sports.
“We have lost so many of our planned fundraising events this year to coronavirus that we would have totally understood if the club had come to us and said closure meant their support was impossible. Instead, members came up with a whole variety of ways to help us. It’s very touching and we are extremely grateful to everyone who undertook a challenge and everyone who supported them in any way.”
Rosemere Cancer Foundation works to bring world class cancer treatments and services to cancer patients from throughout South Cumbria and Lancashire being treated at Rosemere Cancer Centre, the region’s specialist cancer treatment centre at the Royal Preston Hospital, and also at another eight local hospital cancer units across the two counties, including those at Westmorland and Furness General Hospitals and the Royal Lancaster Infirmary.
The charity funds cutting edge equipment, research, training and other cancer services and therapies that the NHS is unable to afford. For further information on its work, including how to make a donation, visit www.rosemere.org.uk
