Raven House Trust could get a boost - but you need to help

Our parent company’s charitable arm, The Gannett Foundation, is providing £128,000 in cash to support local charities across the country and we are delighted to have a £16,000 share to give away in our area.

And we asked you to decide where this money should be spent.

You nominated in your thousands and our editorial team chose a shortlist of ten charities from our region which will share in the £16,000.

One of them is Newport-based Raven House Trust.

Raven House Trust, is one of Wales’ longest serving food banks, which originally started out donating furniture to people in 1992, then evolving into a food bank around a few years later in 1998.

The charity collects food, furniture, bedding, toys and household items to help families and individuals who find themselves in desperate need.

They take in and are able to collect good clean furniture from in and surrounding areas of Newport. The furniture is used for families and people that go without, and, they donate these free of charge (when delivering a small fee of £25 is payable, which is used to maintain a van and driver).

In addition to food parcels and furniture the team at Raven House Trust are also more than happy to receive new toys aged from new born to 12 years for boys and girls, good clean bedding, sleeping bags, kitchen equipment and toiletries.

The team does extra boxed food parcels for the agencies who deal with homeless people.

They are joined by RCVUK, Risca, Marches Family Network, from the South Wales valleys; Vennture, from Hereford; Belle's Story, from Haverfordwest; Snap Specialist Playgroup at Withybush Hospital, Haverfordwest; Vale Baby Basics; Ferne Animal Sanctuary, from Chard in Somerset; Age UK Somerset; and Escape Support Group, from Taunton in Somerset.

We have put the power to allocate the cash back into the hands of our readers.

All you have to do is collect tokens from our newspapers which can then be sent to collection points across our region or posted directly to us.

The tokens are being printed in paper up until November 20 and you have until the end of the following week to get them back to us.

Each token collected will then be used to allocate cash to the nominated charity – so if your favourite charity collects 50 per cent of all to tokens collected, it will receive 50 per cent of the £16,000.

RCVUK has collection points as does Raven House Trust or you can send your vouchers, which are being published regularly in the South Wales Argus, to Gwyn Roberts, Cash for Charities, South Wales Argus, 1st Floor, Chartist Tower, Upper Dock Street, Newport NP20 1DW.

Newsquest terms and conditions will apply where relevant to the grants process; please visit http://www.newsquest.co.uk/prize-competition-rules. Personal data will be used by Newsquest and its agents solely for the administration of the grants process and will not be shared with any third party; our general privacy notice is at: http://www.newsquest.co.uk/privacy-policy. This campaign will be published in multiple Newsquest publications across this Newsquest region. The 10 charities chosen by the local editorial panel will be voted for by our readers. The value of the grant awarded to each of the 10 charities will be calculated pro rata according to their share of the vote. Only original voting coupons will be accepted, no photocopies. The cash grants will be sent by BACS transfer. Grants are conditional on completion of the relevant project and a successful nominee charity may be required to evidence its use of the grant. The top 10 charities selected for the vote will be contacted to provide additional information for entry into the readers’ vote; should this information not be provided within the timescale provided then the editorial panel will select an alternative charity. The charity must be registered with the Charities Commission and have not received a grant from the Gannett Foundation in the last two years.