The Oxford Paper and Oxfordshire Guardian 2017 Charity of the Year
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In January 2017, and in our tenth year, Play2Give was delighted to be chosen as the charity of the year by the now-defunct Oxfordshire Guardian and The Oxford Paper - which was part of the Taylor Newspapers group.

​The now-defunct free weekly Guardian and the weekly paid-for Oxford Paper's charity of the year partnership meant that they gave us regular exposure and heavily featured Play2Give in their papers nearly every week over the course of the year and it also meant that both Oxford Children's Hospital and Headway Oxfordshire - our two benefiting charities in our tenth anniversary year - received more awareness as a result.  Staff at Taylor Newspapers which was based in Didcot also helped raise money by getting involved in fundraising efforts throughout 2017. 

The production manager that year, Peter Herring, took a leap of faith in September that year by skydiving 100-ft out of a plane, and he was followed the next month by George Welch, reporter, who ran 13.1-miles around Oxford in the city's half marathon, to help us raise £19,000 as part of milestone birthday year!

​We were nominated by reporter George Welch and we were thrilled to have been chosen to receive a year's worth of support and awareness through this special partnership.

In 2016 the Blue Skye Thinking charity - The Aim Skye High appeal was the paper's charity of the year. Funds raised for the cause meant that Blue Skye Thinking, set up in 2014 as a legacy for five-year-old Abingdon boy Skye Hall, who died later the year from the side effects of aggressive cancer treatment, helped fund a new researcher through the Aim Skye High appeal. The funding of the researcher, which was greatly increased due to the Oxfordshire Guardian and Oxford Paper's exposure in 2016, enabled £50,000 raised to fund a three-year Post Doctoral research position at the renowned Northern Institute for Cancer Research.   Overall since its creation in 2014, Blue Skye Thinking has raised a phenomenal amount of money and funded a four-year research project into childhood brain tumours, as well as raising awareness about childhood cancers and more funding for research.

​This partnership of being the Oxfordshire Guardian and The Oxford Paper's Charity of the Year 2017 help make our initial '£10k in 10' appeal for 2017 extra special as we aimed to raise £10,000 across the year for the Children's Hospital and Headway Oxfordshire. However, by the end of the year our big birthday year had been so successful that we raised a record-breaking £19,000! Oxford Children's Hospital received £12k, whilst Headway gained from £7k.

​Speaking at the time of the partnership, Karen Neville, who was the paper's group editor, said: "Play2Give is a great example of the good that can be done by people and communities when they come together for entirely selfless reasons and only to help improve the lives of those less fortunate and this was the over-riding reason why we chose to give our support to Play2Give as our charity of 2017. What Andy Baker and the team have achieved in 10 years is a testament to their hard work and dedication and we are proud to help them further this work this year as their mark their 10th anniversary."
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We made front page of The Oxford Paper.. 9th March 2017
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Page 16... The Oxford Paper. 9 March 2017
​Oxfordshire fundraising organisation Established 2007 - Changing transforming and saving lives across Oxfordshire
Patrons: Dr Winston Ellis and David Johnston OBE MP

Head Office: 3 King Walk, Didcot, Oxon OX11 7PE
Email: hello@play2give.org.uk | Telephone: 07939064308