The Jessie May Trust is appealing for votes after reaching the finals of the prestigious National Lottery Awards. It is competing against six others in the Best Health Project category. They beat off stiff competition from more than 1,300 organisations to reach the public voting stage in this year’s National Lottery Awards. This was a record number of entries to the annual search for the UK’s favourite Lottery-funded projects.
The project with the most votes will be crowned the winner in their category. They will receive a £5,000 cash prize to spend on their project, an iconic National Lottery Awards trophy, and they will attend a star-studded glittering awards ceremony to be broadcast on BBC One in September.
Now in its 21st year, the Jessie May Trust is a children’s hospice at home, offering a lifeline to families in the South West.
The charity Jessie May has grown significantly, and is currently supporting 129 terminally ill children and their families, including many young carers and a further 42 bereaved families in Bristol, Bath, South Gloucestershire, North Somerset and Wiltshire.
For three hours at a time Jessie May’s professional nurses take over the sole care of the ill child, giving parents and siblings quality time to be together, catch up, have fun - simple things which are hard to do, given the pressures of caring for a child with complex medical needs.
Fiona Foster from Jessie May said: “We are delighted to have been nominated for a National Lottery Award and to have reached the final public voting round.
“Jessie May is a children’s hospice at home which helps ordinary people at an extraordinary time in their lives. It provides nursing care at home for children and young people with life limiting conditions. This in turn helps brothers and sisters, who are often young carers, to have a few hours of family time with mum and dad.
“We hope the public continue to support this project by voting for us as the UK’s best Health project in the National Lottery Awards.”
National Lottery Awards spokesperson, Jackie O’Sullivan, added:
“National Lottery players raise £30 million every single week for Good Causes across the UK and the work done with that money is truly life-changing.
“The National Lottery Awards celebrate the talent and dedication of the amazing staff and volunteers who run these incredible National Lottery funded projects for the benefit of their communities.
“Jessie May has worked very hard to become a finalist and they now need your support. So get voting!”
To vote for Jessie May, please go to lotterygoodcauses.org.uk/awards or telephone 0844 836 9695 and follow the campaign on Twitter with hashtag #NLAwards. Voting runs for four weeks from 9am on 29 June until midnight on 27 July.
There are seven projects competing for votes across seven categories, reflecting the main areas of National Lottery funding: arts, sport, heritage, health, environment, education and voluntary/charity.