Birthday Bear gets transported to Aviemore for big lottery celebration
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A Badenoch and Strathspey charity welcomed a special guest to celebrate the National Lottery's upcoming birthday.
Knitted mascot Birthday Bear made the latest stop of his tour to mark 25 years of the National Lottery at Badenoch and Strathspey Community Transport Company based in Aviemore.
The charity was awarded £485,047 of National Lottery funding in 2015 from the National Lottery Community Fund.
Over the past five years they have used this funding to expand their support for isolated older people, including a community car scheme, shopping project and access to a range of social and exercise activities.
Pat Cruickshank — who has ongoing issues with her spine — has been travelling to exercise classes for more than a year with Where2Today.
She said: “It’s changed my life. It’s the best thing that could have happened to me. Without it I’d have been going round on two sticks."
Maggie Lawson is the community transport project development manager for Where2Today.
She remarked: “Thanks to National Lottery players, this funding is allowing us to reach out to our most vulnerable people. Often it just takes something small — and lots of small things make such a big difference to people’s lives.”
Every single month, National Lottery players raise £4.9 million towards charities in Scotland.
Maureen McGinn, National Lottery Community Fund Scotland chair, said: “Over the last 25 years, National Lottery players have raised an amazing £3.1 billion for 64,000 good causes in Scotland.
"We are proud to be able to award this funding to inspirational, life changing groups like the Badenoch and Strathspey Community Transport Company which make a huge impact in their local communities every day.”
Touring around National Lottery-funded projects across Scotland, Birthday Bear was handmade in Glasgow by members of the National Lottery funded Knit and Natter group, which is a part of the of The Annexe Communities Connects2 Project and aims to support isolated older people.
AC development officer Jane Cowie commented: “We had the idea to support the Lottery’s birthday celebrations with knitting them a Birthday Bear who could then go around visiting many of the other projects around Scotland that they fund, connecting us all up and growing awareness of how powerful the Lottery funding is for local communities.”
You can follow Birthday Bear’s journey visiting National You can follow Birthday Bear’s journey visiting National Lottery funded projects across Scotland on The National Lottery Community Fund Scotland’s Twitter and Facebook.
