CHIPS


CI: At the recent British Casino Awards, I know Genting pledged the cost of a wheelchair; are British casino groups very supportive of the charity? LL: Genting have always come to our golf events, and they have been heavily involved in our fundraising. We had a team of seven from Genting running in the Madrid marathon, for example; in 2016 they did the Las Vegas Rock n’ Roll Marathon and presented us with a cheque for £32,000. That bought five wheelchairs!


CI: What’s the aim of the charity going forward? Apart from providing more chairs of course… PM: We want to get more casino staff involved in fundraising; the more we can make people aware of what we’re doing, the better. This is their charity, we want them to get involved and see the good that comes from it. We do what we can but we need to spread the word even more.


CI: How do you find fundraisers? Do casinos encourage staff to do things? LL: The Madrid marathoners came to us through Genting, for example. Because we have been around the industry for a long time as Huxleys, we know many people; it filters down through the staff and people hear about us. Also, Praesepe – who are also our biggest fundraisers – have helped us produce a magazine, and we have distributed that around casinos.


CI: Do the people that have helped with fundraising get to see the results of their hard work? Could they go to a wheelchair presentation for example? LL: Absolutely. We can’t do presentations on gaming premises as the children are under 18, we did one outside The Hippodrome and had tea in a nearby hotel afterward, so our donors could meet the recipients and see the end product. It also means some of their sponsors can come and see what their donations have made happen. It’s about touching people and involving people in the presentations. PM: We get great feedback from parents as well. In our early days, we had presented a wheelchair to a young boy and a few days afterward Linda got a letter from his mother. It said thankyou for the wheelchair, as you might expect, but it also said you can’t believe the joy that we get, and that our son gets, from going to the end of the garden and back again under his own steam.


I could have cried just hearing that – it’s just to the end of the garden and back again, but it means the world. LL: One of the other things that makes us special is that we have no waiting list. We will never offer a chair to a child unless we have the money in the bank. You can’t say to an eight-year-old yes, you’ll get your independence but we don’t know when. Once we know where to look for the child – and it’s the fundraiser’s choice as to where funds are allocated – we will approach physiotherapists, occupational therapists, and schools in the area. We tell them it’s possible that we may have some funding for a wheelchair for a child, can you put someone forward? Physios are great because they often know the family as well. The child is then assessed for their wheelchair needs, partly by the team already working with them and partly by the supplier. Provided we have the budget, completed application form and a letter of support from the physio, we will turn that around in a maximum of three months.


CI: What’s been your highlight over the years of fundraising? LL: Every single presentation. We once gave a chair to a child so disabled that wheelchair services said they would never be able to move independently. We got a chair that had a tray with a button; he hit the button and the chair moved. There was not a dry eye in the room, including me. We have given 500 chairs out now and every presentation is life-changing, and every one is very, very special.


MARCH 2018 49


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