The Williamsons Easter raffle for 2010 raised money for the local child contact centre which is located on Walker Street in Hull.

The centre helps local children and families have time together in a neutral space where they can play and enjoy each others company.

The Walker Street centre is one of many centres located all over the UK.

All of the money raised by the staff at Williamsons from the 2010 Easter raffle has all been given to this worthy cause.

Castle Hill Oncology Unit

The Partners at Williamsons provide prizes each year for an Easter Raffle the proceeds of which are donated to a local good cause.

The good cause for 2009 was the Castle Hill Oncology Unit in East Yorkshire which was opened by Her Majesty the Queen in March 2009.

Williamsons sponsored David Foster, a relative of a member of staff, £150 to complete a hike in the Lake District national park for which he raised a total of £2537 from his valiant effort!

The money raised will help fund a special chair to treat patients needing radiotherapy in an upright position when they are too ill and breathless to have the treatment in the usual lying position.

Every year Williamsons support a charity with a "guess the name of the bear" challenge. In 2009 the money raised was donated to the National Blind Children's Society.

The National Blind Children's Society’s objective is to enable children and young people with visual impairment to achieve their educational and recreational goals.

They offer help and support from the moment a child is diagnosed, usually at birth, through each key stage of their education to the age of twenty-five.

St. Andrew's Children's Hospice & HERIB

Every Christmas the Partners at Williamsons provide prizes for a raffle and the proceeds are divided amongst different charities.

For Christmas 2008 we donated to St. Andrew's Children's Hospice and Hull & East Riding Institute for the Blind (HERIB).

We made a donation to HERIB which helps and supports blind and partially sighted people in our region. They have been helping in Hull and the East Riding since 1864 and visit over 400 people every month offering help and advice.

Their staff give much needed care and support to terminally ill children and their families. Their main aims are to improve the children's quality of life, to bring fun into their everyday routines by providing specialist medical and nursing care and to keep them smiling.

The St Andrew’s Children’s Hospice needs to raise £700,000; from donations raised they receive 78p, in every £1, is spent on a patient.

NSPCC

During the Festive Season Williamsons staff are offered the option to donate £2 to charity as opposed to sending individual cards to friends and colleagues.

They each suggest a charity of their choice and a charity is selected from these suggestions. Nearly half of all our staff chose this option in December 2008 and in January 2009 their donation was given to the NSPCC.

The NSPCC offers help advice and support to children suffering from abuse. Their mission statement is simple: End cruelty to children. FULL STOP.

They have 180 community-based projects and run the NSPCC Helpline and ChildLine in the UK and the Channel Islands. Most of their work is with children, young people and their families. We also work to achieve cultural, social and political change - influencing legislation, policy, practice, public attitudes and behaviours and delivering services for the benefit of young people.

Each year Williamsons supports the Jeans for Genes, which raises funds to provide research into children’s genetic disorders.

In October 2009 Williamsons raised money for the charity by allowing the staff that donated to the charity to wear denim to work on Friday 2nd October 2009.

Genetic disorders are individually very rare but together they are the cause of more than half of all childhood deaths in the UK.

The charity aim to provide funding for the care and support of children and their families. They also help to fund research into the genes responsible and the development of effective treatments and cures.

They do this by providing funding to a range of charities each year. Their support also means that families living with rare, often unpronounceable conditions, get their voices heard.

Circus Starr

Williamsons donated, via Circus Starr, four circus tickets for to the Hull Royal Infirmary Children’s Ward.

Circus Starr occupies a unique position in British circus by raising thousands of pounds for local charities from the advance sales of tickets to local businesses. The donations from those sales go towards specialised equipment for hospitals, hospices and other worthy causes.

Since taking to the road 20 years ago, Circus Starr have raised more than 1 million pounds for local charities.