Leeds charity supporting people with Down syndrome launches urgent fundraiser to keep vital services
A Leeds charity has launched a campaign to raise £30,000 to keep services for people with Down Syndrome alive in the city.
Sunshine & Smiles Leeds Down Syndrome Network, which has a base in Stainbeck Lane, was founded by parents in 2011.
Over the last decade, it has been providing support for families in the city who have a child or young person with Down syndrome, offering speech and language therapy, activities and individual family support.
But as the charity heads into the last month of the financial year, the team behind the charity are looking at a £30,000 deficit.
Service manager Ailith Harley-Roberts told the Yorkshire Evening Post that the deficit is due to a number of factors, the biggest being the cost of living crisis affecting both donations and the charity’s own running costs.
Committed to providing its valuable - and free - services to 180 families it currently supports in the city, Sunshine & Smiles is now looking to its supporters and the wider community for additional help.
Ailith said: “The reality of the situation is if you go into a new financial year already in deficit, you naturally have to think about what you can no longer afford to do.
“Obviously, nobody wants to do that, which is why we have launched the Crowdfunder. We thought, ‘let us be proactive’, rather than getting to the point of thinking, ‘how do we save money?’
“We constantly fundraise. Whether that's kind of us doing our own fundraising activities, applying for different grants and funding opportunities, people do challenges, write out for donations.
“But the landscape these last 12 months has been really, really hard for lots and lots of reasons. Everybody's finding the cost of living difficult. That impacts on people being able to give, which is completely understandable.
“The cost of living also impacts on our costs for energy, stock or resources that we're buying for the charity.”
Sunshine & Smiles is the charity behind Headingley cafe 21 Co, a five-star rated cafe and shop in Otley Road, Headingley.
The cafe has been providing paid employment opportunities for people with Down syndrome while boosting independence. It’s a service the charity doesn’t want to lose, Ailith said.
“We've got an amazing team of people who work and volunteer with us, but we also need to make sure that they get paid properly.
“All of the young people who work in the cafe are paid the same as everybody else who works in the cafe and we don't want that to change.
“All of our sessions and activities and support is free to the families that need it. We don't want that to change either.
“The true essence of charity is to provide support to people in need and we know that having a child with any kind of additional need places an additional financial cost on families. We definitely don't want to add to that.”
The response to the Crowdfunder has been “phenomenal,” Ailith said. Nearly £15,000 of the £30,000 target has been raised as more and more people come to show their support for the charity.
Ailith said: “People have been so generous.
“And it's not just money coming in on the donations page - lots and lots of people have contacted us to say, ‘could we help in other ways? Can we spread the word?’ That power of community has felt really strong.
“People have been doing their own fundraising, doing bake sales, signing up to do bike rides and runs.”
Find out how you can get involved with Sunshine & Smiles’ Crowdfunder via the official website and find out more about the charity via its official social media channels.