St. John’s Hospice is set to benefit from a year’s fundraising, thanks to Sainsbury’s Morecambe customers and colleagues.

The hospice has been chosen as Sainsbury’s new Local Charity partner for 2012/2013, after the store asked Morecambe customers which local charity they should provide a year’s support to back in May.

The partnership officially launched on 11th June 2012 and customers can now choose to make a donation in-store to St Johns Hospice, who are situated on Slyne Road.

The charity was founded in 1987 and provides specialist palliative care to patients with life limiting illness throughout North Lancashire, South Lakes and North Yorkshire for over 25yrs.  Over the next 12 months, the charity will benefit from Sainsbury’s Local Charity partner scheme, now in it’s fourth year.

Last year, Sainsbury’s Local Partner initiative supported over 1000 charities and organisations across the UK through fundraising and volunteering and gave more than £1.5 million of support to local communities.

Sainsbury’s Morecambe Local Charity partner last year was Morecambe Road School and thanks to customers and colleagues, they raised £3500 for the charity, who will be putting the donation towards a whole school trip to Blackpool Zoo.

During the next 12 months, colleagues will be providing fundraising support for St Johns Hospice and raising awareness of the charity with the local community.

“St Johns Hospice is such a worthy local cause,” said Sainsbury’s Morecambe Store Manager Steve Spencer, “and we’re pleased and proud to be supporting it over the next 12 months. We’ll be letting our customers know of our fundraising plans in-store and we hope they can join our colleagues in helping support them”.

Catherine Butterworth of St Johns Hospice said:  “I’d like to thank everyone at Sainsbury’s Morecambe who’s nominated us to be the store’s new Local Charity partner. I hope this partnership will raise awareness to Morecambe residents about what we do and the impact we have in the community. 

“We now look forward to a successful year working with the store’s colleagues on this exciting initiative”.