The Salisbury Journal is giving local charities the chance to take a share of a whopping £125,000 cash giveaway.

Our parent company’s charitable arm, The Gannett Foundation, is providing £125,000 in cash to support charities across the country and we are delighted to have £20,000 to give away in our area.

We asked YOU to decide where this money should be spent. You nominated in your thousands and our editorial team from across Wiltshire, Hampshire, Dorset and Cornwall has now chosen a shortlist of eight charities from these nominations that will share in the £20,000.

Salisbury’s nominated charity is The Bridge Youth Project, which helps raise young people’s aspirations and increase resilience through mentoring, emotional literacy and social skill lessons and wellbeing courses.

To help young people cope with the impact of the pandemic, the charity has been taking their mentoring initiative into schools. Their ‘Bringing Hope’ project trains members of the community and matches them with students for 10 weeks.

Any money awarded to the charity will go towards the running of this scheme, which next year will cost the charity £15,000.

Other charities in our region that have been nominated for a slice of £20,000 are:

  • Amelia’s Rainbow – supporting children with lifelong disabilities or serious illness in Bournemouth
  • Communicare in Southampton – aiming to relieve poverty, hardship and distress
  • Cornwall Accessible Activities Program – supporting families with disabled children or children with additional needs
  • South Wight Area Youth Partnership – providing early help support to families with specific issues such as budgeting and school attendance
  • The Safe, Basingstoke – providing baby clothing and equipment for up to two-year-olds
  • The Will Macakness Trust – offering water sports to young people
  • Winchester Go LD – supporting adults with learning disabilities

Now we are putting the power to allocate the cash back into your hands.

During November, you are invited to collect tokens from our newspapers which can then be delivered or posted to collection points across our region.

These can be found on page 12 of last week's Journal (November 4), or on page 26 of this week's issue (November 11).

Each token collected will then be used to allocate cash to the nominated charity – so if your chosen charity collects 50 per cent of all to tokens received, it will be awarded 50 per cent of the £20,000!

Collection points are located at:

  • Martins Salisbury – 34 Blue Boar Row, SP1 1DA
  • Durrington News – 87 Bulford Road, Durrington, SP4 8EX
  • McColls Amesbury – 39 Salisbury Street, Amesbury, SP4 7AW
  • Pitton Post Office and Stores – High Street, Pitton, SP5 1DQ
  • The Bridge Youth Project, c/o Sarum Academy, Westwood Road, SP2 9HS

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