For several years Linfield FC has been proud to work closely with the Northern Ireland Children's Hospice, as this club's official partner charity.
It's a partnership which has seen a figure in the region of £40 000 raised in support of the Children's Hospice, to enable them to provide expert care for many children in need.
The present corona virus pandemic has had a severe and adverse impact on so many fundraising activities and efforts on behalf of the Children's Hospice (and other good causes too) and this in turn could impact on the provision of expert care needed by so many children in need across our country.
As many of you will be aware, the Adult and Children's Hospice have had to launch an Emergency appeal to raise funds, to enable them to maintain their delivery of vital and much needed services in these most difficult and challenging times.
It's an Emergency Appeal which Linfield Football Club is delighted to support and promote - along with support from so many others across our society.
The partnership arrangement we have with the Children's Hospice includes a minimum of two bucket collections at Windsor Park before home games each season.
A bucket collection was due (and hopefully will be due) before the post split league game against Glentoran at Windsor Park.
Prior to the mid March postponement of all football due to the corona virus pandemic, if the league split had have occurred based on the current league table standings, Linfield would have been due to host Glentoran at Windsor Park on Saturday past.
Linfield would have held a bucket collection to support and promote the Children's Hospice at this game on Saturday and a figure in the region of £1000 would have been delivered by now, to enable the Children's Hospice to carry on their essential work in caring for young people from across our country.
Hopefully, the match and the collection can be rearranged in due course.
However, by launching this emergency appeal, our official partner charity clearly needs our support sooner, as well as later.
Therefore, Linfield FC is today launching an official just giving appeal to help support our official partner charity in the Northern Ireland Children's Hospice.
This club will be pledging a donation to support our fundraising effort and we would appeal to our supporters (and indeed supporters of other clubs) to join our efforts, to raise vital and urgently needed funds for this extremely worthy cause.
We are aware that not everyone can afford to give in these extremely challenging times and we are aware that there are a lot of worthwhile causes appealing for limited available funds.
We are also aware that supporters may well have already given extremely generous financial donations in the past week to support a similar appeal from the 1st Raven LSC, in aid of our wonderful NHS. Earlier today, the Raven club announced that their fundraising appeal had raised an incredible £15 000 and the lads at the Raven club deserve enormous praise for their magnificent efforts in support of our front line staff, fighting this invisible enemy across our country.
So, while we understand why many will not be able to support our appeal, we are encouraging and asking those who can, to give their wholehearted backing and financial support to a genuine and sincere call to help our official charity partners at this time of what they are calling an emergency appeal.
Our supporters have repeatedly shown what big hearts you have and this will be another opportunity to show that we care and that we want to help those in genuine need.
This is an appeal with no fixed end date at this stage - although this situation will be kept under review - and we hope to transfer much needed funds to the Children's Hospice before the end of May.
To pledge your support to this appeal, please follow the link to the just giving account below.
https://www.justgiving.com/fundraising/linfieldfc-nich
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