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Two projects supporting people with cancer benefit today from a share of £14,357,593 from the Big Lottery Fund’s Reaching Communities programme. A total of 50 projects benefit nationwide, with Maggie’s Cancer Care receiving £329,373 and the Orchid Cancer Appeal £133,139.

A full list of projects is available here

With grants from £10,000 upwards, the Reaching Communities programme aims to help those most in need and build stronger communities.

The idea behind Maggie’s Centres came from Maggie Keswick Jenks in 1993.  A cancer patient herself, she and her husband believed that in order to live more positively with cancer, people needed the information that would allow them to be an informed participant in their medical treatment, have access to stress reducing therapies, psychological support and the opportunity to meet other people who were in a similar situation.

Determined that people should not ‘lose the joy of living’ in the fear of dying, Maggie and her husband Charles worked closely with her medical team and oncology nurse, Laura Lee who is now CEO of Maggie’s, to develop a new approach to cancer care.

Eighteen months after her own death from breast cancer, the first Maggie’s Centre opened in 1996 in Edinburgh and her dream was realised.

There are now 17 Maggie’s Centres at major NHS cancer hospitals in the UK, offering a programme of support that has been shown to strengthen physical and emotional wellbeing for the 300,000 people diagnosed with cancer every year in the UK.

This Lottery grant will fund the expansion and running of the cancer support centre which opened last year at the Northern Centre for Cancer at the Freeman Hospital in Newcastle-upon-Tyne; the largest centre of its kind in the north of England.

Maggie’s CEO, Laura Lee said: We are absolutely delighted to have secured funding from the Big Lottery Fund to support our new cancer support service in the North East. 

“Thanks to this grant, Maggie’s programme of practical, emotional and psychological support will be available to people with cancer and their family and friends across the region. The service will complement the clinical care people receive at the Northern Centre for Cancer Care at the Freeman Hospital. It will be free to use, with no appointment necessary and available to anyone affected by any type of cancer.

“I would like to thank the Big Lottery Fund for their continued commitment towards our work.”

The Orchid Cancer Appeal which receives £133,139 was set up in 1996 by testicular cancer patient Colin Osborne and the oncologist who saved his life. The charity exists to save men's lives from testicular, prostate and penile cancers through a range of support services, pioneering research and promoting awareness.

From sons to grandfathers, all men face the risk of testicular, prostate or penile cancer and over 43,000 men are diagnosed with a male-specific cancer every year.

Orchid plays a leading role in the fight against male cancers and has developed many new services for men and their families, supporting anyone affected.

Since the launch of Orchid’s Male Cancer Information Service, there has been a significant rise in demand for in-depth, specific information and specialist support.

The Big Lottery Fund grant will enable Orchid to increase its work with those affected, deliver even more tailored information, run its penile cancer buddying scheme, promote e-learning tools for GPs and run a national Penile Cancer Information Event. The charity also plans to develop a cohort of 100 volunteer Orchid Ambassadors made up of male cancer survivors, family members and healthcare professionals.

Rebecca Porta, Chief Executive of Orchid, based at St Bartholomew's Hospital in London, said: “Orchid is delighted to have received a grant of £133,139 from the Big Lottery Fund.

“Since we launched our Male Cancer Information Service in 2011, we have seen a huge increase in calls and emails from men and families across the UK, looking for up-to-date information about penile, testicular and prostate cancer. 

“This grant will help us to fund the increased hours of one of our Male Cancer Information Specialists, enabling us to offer even more support to more people, over the next three years. The grant will also help us to develop new specialist publications, awareness-raising initiatives in the community and support services.  We are very grateful to the Big Lottery Fund for its investment in Orchid’s work.”

Also today, Seeing Ear receives a Big Lottery Fund grant of £454,343 to fund its ‘Books for All Partnership Project’. Seeing Ear is a charity that provides an online library for blind and print-disabled people, with literature in flexible formats that can be downloaded by those unable to use conventional books, either because they cannot see the print or because turning pages is too difficult for them.

The charity has been helping people who want to read but who are unable to use ordinary books since 2005, and is constantly striving to update and improve what it does. Based in St Leonard’s-on-Sea in Sussex, its ‘Books for All Partnership Project’ is an England-wide project that will enable users, most of whom are school pupils, not only to enjoy more publications but also to interact with each other, if they wish to, through a kind of online book club. The aim is to enhance the development of social skills, educational achievement and social understanding in the youngsters who use the service, thereby increasing their future life-prospects.

Finally, UpRising Leadership (UL) receives £427,413 for a project called ‘We're speaking up for our Community’.

Based in Hackney, East London, UL is Britain’s first ‘Emerging Leaders Network’ from diverse socio-economic, ethnic and cultural backgrounds. It aims to enable young adults from disadvantaged and marginalised areas to engage with their community and tackle critical community issues, by providing them with the knowledge, networks, skills and confidence to represent their community’s needs.

Currently running programmes in London, Birmingham, the Black Country & Solihull, Bedfordshire & Luton and Greater Manchester, the Lottery funding will enable UL to engage with more young people aged between 19 and 25 in Birmingham, Manchester and Salford.

Alison Rowe, Big Lottery Fund spokesperson, said: “It is always wonderful and often humbling to see how many lives our Reaching Communities grants touch, and in so many different ways.

“The work being done by Maggie’s Centres and the Orchid Cancer Appeal are just two examples of how Lottery money is used to help support people facing enormous struggles in their lives,” 

“Thanks to today’s awards, many more individuals, families and communities will get the support they need to help them deal with the challenges they face.”

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Out of hours media contact: 07867 500 572

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Full details of the Big Lottery Fund programmes and grant awards are available on the website: www.biglotteryfund.org.uk
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Notes to editors

• The Big Lottery Fund, the largest distributor of National Lottery good cause funding, is responsible for giving out 40% of the money raised for good causes by the National Lottery.
• The Fund is committed to bringing real improvements to communities and the lives of people most in need and has been rolling out grants to health, education, environment and charitable causes across the UK. Since its inception in 2004 BIG has awarded close to £6bn.
• The Fund was formally established by Parliament on 1 December 2006.
• In the year ending 31 March 2013, 28% of total National Lottery revenue was returned to the Good Causes
• Since the National Lottery began in 1994, over £30 billion has now been raised and more than 400,000 grants awarded across arts, sport, heritage, charities, health, education and the environment.