Author: Lorraine

Over the last few months Tesco in Great Harwood have been running a book swap stand, and all money raised has been donated to Milly’s Smiles.

To date they have raised an amazing amount of £2790! This will fund almost 20 of our Milly Bags.

Milly Bags are given out to families whose child has been newly diagnosed with a cancer related illness and admitted into one of the main treatment hospitals across the North of England.

Lucy from Great Harwood, received a Milly Bag when she was diagnosed with Neuroblastoma and admitted onto Ward 84 at Royal Manchester Children’s Hospital.

Mum, Carrie told us “Lucy was 8 years old when she was diagnosed with cancer. Finding ourselves in hospital unexpectedly for a long stay was something that we weren’t prepared for. The Milly’s Smiles bag meant the world to us – not just because it was filled with so much practical stuff that we desperately needed but also just the fact that someone cared enough to make sure we had what we needed – and more importantly had walked in our shoes and knew exactly what it was like to be in our situation “

We thank you everyone who has supported the book swap, this money will make a huge difference to us and we appreciate it more than you will ever know. Together we really are making a difference every single day.

Earlier this month Ross, took on The Marathon Des Sables which is classed as the toughest foot race in the world .

Ross flew to Morocco to take part in the gruelling challenge where he had to run 250km in 6 days whilst carrying this own kit including food and sleeping gear, in exceedingly hot temperatures of 50C and above!

This was an awesome challenge and one which Ross has been preparing for over several months.

As well as completing this incredible feat Ross has also raised an amazing amount of £5455.00 for Milly’s Smiles!

He told us that it was ‘an epic event but very brutal’.

Huge well done to Ross and thank you to everyone who supported him. We hope he is getting plenty of rest and recovery time!

PC Dave Render first met Milly when she was the traffic ambasader at school in year 6. Milly made an impression on Dave and since meeting her he has been very supportive of Milly, both during her time in hospital and the subsequent setting up of Milly’s Smiles.

PC Dave has regularly raised money for Milly’s charity over the 6 years we have been operating. Most recently we received a donation of £300 following Dave being nominated for the George Herbert Redman Award.

The award is given out annually for Officers who go above and beyond the call of duty by delivering a premium service to their local community. As runner up PC Dave was able to nominate a charity to receive the donation, and he kindly chose Milly’s Smiles.

We send our congratulations to PC Dave for this wonderful well deserved award, and thank you so much for choosing Milly’s Charity.

At the start of the year we were joined by 21 young ladies from the 10th Great Harwood Brownies.

They came along to our unit to help us make up some Milly Bags.

We had previously met the girls last year when they were kind enough to support Milly’s Smiles by collecting toiletries for our bags.

All the girls were brilliant, they worked as a team and did a wonderful job of maintaining our extremely high standards when packing the bags.

Well done girls, you were wonderful and fully deserved your charity badge.

In November 2020 Luke was diagnosed with lymphoma and treated on Ward 3B at Alder Hey, where he received his Milly Bag.

Unfortunately late last year whilst on Ward 84/86 at Manchester Children’s Hospital Luke’s rainbow blanket was sent to the hospital laundry never to be seen again.

Mum, Vicky told us how sad Luke was and how much he loved and missed his blanket.

We knew we had to put a smile back on Luke’s face and so we sent a replacement blanket specially addressed to him.Luke’s smile says it all and just warms out heart.

After returning from holiday in Spain our delivery team found themselves in the Milly’s Smiles van on their way to Alder Hey Childrens Hospital!

20 Milly Bags were then safely handed over to staff from Ward 3B all ready to be given to new admissions arriving on the ward over the coming weeks.

We send our love to all the families who will receive one of our Milly Bags, we feel privileged to be able help in just a small way, we recognise that this would not be possible without the wonderful support we receive from so many people.

Following our delivery we received a lovely message from a family who had recently received one of our Milly Bags:

“Just to say thank you so much for the bag which we received on admission to Alder Hey with our 16 year old daughter Grace on New Years Eve. The contents were so practical and the bag itself has come in really handy as we accumulated so much stuff since we were admitted (we have just landed back on the Isle of Man today for a few days and checked it in absolutely full up!). It has all been very well used and we really appreciate it. I am so sorry that the outcome for Milly was not as you would have wished. It is lovely that you have set up the charity in her memory so that her smile lives on. Sending many thanks and our love to your family. Angela xx”.

Thank you for helping us to make a difference every day.

A few weeks ago I was lucky enough to meet the lovely Isabel. Isabel has been busy knitting rainbow elephants over the last few months and she was kind enough to hand deliver them to us.

Isabel travelled all the way from Cleveleys with her herd, and we were thrilled to be able to meet her and say thank you in person. This is the second herd of elephants that Isabel has kindly knitted.

We are so grateful to all our lovely knitters who have so kindly sent out elephants over the last few weeks and months. They truly make a huge difference to our bags, the elphants are so loved by everyone who receives a Milly Bag.

Last month we were joined by some of our fabulous volunteers who came to make up more Milly Bags.

The hospitals that we work with are all treating Ukrainian children who are undergoing cancer treatment.

We therefore need to make sure we have enough Milly Bags for everyone at the point of admission and diagnosis.

Thank you to a great bunch of people for giving up their time yesteday, they managed to make 40 Milly Bags, and they did a great job of it too!

We are always looking for volunteers, if you would like to help and have some free time during the week please get in touch with us, we would love to hear from you.

Do you have any spare time on your hands during the week?

Would you love to give something back to your local community?

If so, then Milly’s Smiles would love to hear from you….

Over the course of the coming months we will be in our local supermarkets raising awareness of our work supporting children and their families who have been newly diagnosed with cancer.

We are looking for volunteers to join us. If you have any free time on either a Monday, Wednesday or Friday and would like to volunteer your time for a local children’s cancer charity we would love to meet with you.

You can contact us via email at hello@millyssmiles.org to register your interest.