SUNDOWNS was delighted to receive £441.14 from RBS following a Dress Down Day held by their staff.

Many thanks to Suzanne O'Donnell for nominating SUNDOWNS for this donation

Radio City's Charity, Cash For Kids, has been extremely generous to SUNDOWNS over the last year.

Following funding applications SUNDOWNS has received £1,000.00 to provide activites for the siblings over the next year and another £1,000.00 in order to provide specialist reading books for children who have Downs Syndrome to use at school.

Many thanks to Cash For Kids for all their support.

In July Lisa Masters was invited to Vauxhall Motors to collect a cheque for £1,000.00, this was as a result of a funding application to the company.

The money wil be used to provide activities for the SUNDOWNS siblings over the next year.

Wirral Scout Post has announced that this year one of its beneficiaies for Christmas 2008 will be SUNDOWNS.

SUNDOWNS will attend an event in February to collect the donation, which will be used to finance the 2009 SUNDOWNS Signing For Babies Project.

On 07/06/08 employees from the John Cotton Group in Yorkshire and cyclists from Port Sunlight, left the John Cotton Mill to cycle to Birkenhead in order to raise money for SUNDOWNS.

This event had been organised by Sue Boddell whose husband was cycling in the event and who had ridden rom John O'groats to Lands End last year to raise money for SUNDOWNS.

The cyclists ranged from very experienced to novices and began arriving in Birkenhead at around 6.00pm . Here they were met by the Mayor of Wirral as well as some of the SUNDOWNS families.

A huge thanks to all the cyclists who raised over £2500.00  for SUNDOWNS, which included a donation of £1000.00 from S. Collins and Co.   

Whilst Coastal Walkers were busy raising funds for SUNDOWNS, the same day saw runners undertaking the Chester Half Marathon on our behalf.

Parent members Emma and Steve Strachan were joined by friends and family as well as six employees from Birkenhead Building and Roofing Supplies Ltd.

After the event Steve and Martin Pilgrim from Birkenhead Building and Roofing Supplies Ltd held a party with raffle to raise even more funds for SUNDOWNS.

Money from the event is still coming in but so far SUNDOWNS has received over £3000.00!!

A huge thanks to everyone involved for all their hard work.   

SUNDOWNS is delighted to announce that Mini Monster Funhouse , New Hall Centre, Chester High Road, CH64 3TE has chosen SUNDOWNS as its charity!

To celebrate owner Brian Young held a private party for SUNDOWNS members on 18/03/08. Everyone had a fantastic time and Brian provided food too.

If you would like to visit the Mini Monsters Funhouse ring 0151 353 1123 and look out for the SUNDOWNS Wishing Well on the Miniature Golf Course! 

On 01/02/08 Damian Harrison organised a Race Night with employees, barristers and even a judge from Liverpool Crown Court in order to raise funds for SUNDOWNS.

Sponsors of the event included Castle Street Chambers, Harrington Street Chambers, Exchange Chambers, Oriel Street Chambers, Carpenter Solicitors, Ray Stubbs and Pizza Hut.

As well as the Race Night, Damian also organised an auction and raised over   £1000!!

A huge SUNDOWNS thank you to everyone involved.

The sponsors of this years' SUNDOWNS T-shirts for the Wirral Coastal Walk is Chep.

A huge thanks to the company who have donated £600 in order that SUNDOWNS can provide 100 T-shirts for its walkers.

The Port Sunlight Workplace Trust has donated £500 towards the SUNDOWNS Art/Fun days for 2008.

A huge thanks to them for supporting SUNDOWNS

In November Royal Bank of Scotland Foundation and the Daily Mail opened their Children's Charity Give Away.

Readers were invited to nominate their favourite charity from across the whole of the U.K. and the 90 winning charities would receive £10,000 each.

In December it was announced that SUNDOWNS had been chosen as one of the winners!! A huge thanks to everyone who voted for us!!

A huge thanks to Mr Bodell, Mr Hughes, Mr Shepperd and Mr Freeman who undertook the massive task of cycling from John O'Groats to Lands End on behalf of SUNDOWNS.

They raised a magnificent £2,590 for the charity!! Thanks too to Ken and Karen Ellis for all their support in this event

Your Wirral Fund has granted SUNDOWNS £2478.00  to enable us to publish our bi-monthly Newsletter for the next 12 months.

Raise money for SUNDOWNS every time you search the web.

Everyclick is a great new search engine. It works just like other major search engines but it also generates cash for the charity of your choice. They have already raised hundreds of thousands of pounds for a wide range of charities.

Make Everyclick.com your homepage and raise money for SUNDOWNS whenever you search the web.

http://www.everyclick.com/sundowns

Family member John Sheridan has again undertaken the horrendous Tough Guy Challenge along with team mates Gary Titherington, Steve Jones, Kevin Cunningham and Daviv Jones.

Mike Stanley of Stanley Engineering UK pledged £500 to SUNDOWNS if the lads completed the course. The lads managed to do just that and SUNDOWNS received the cheque shortly after.

Many thanks to everyone who took part and, of course, to Mike for donating.

On 21/04/07 Nicky and Graham Macdonald, parent members of SUNDOWNS, held a fundraising evening at the Pensby Hotel on the Wirral.

The room was full to capacity and everyone enjoyed a buffet,  live act as well as a raffle.
The event raised a staggering £1285.00. Nicky and Graham did particularly well in stressing the importance of Gift Aid at the event and this netted them a further £280.00,which SUNDOWNS can claim back from the tax office at the end of the tax year.

A huge thanks to Nicky and Graham and to everyone who sponsored and supported the event.  

A huge thank you to Marc Smith for completing his Marathon Row in November.

To date Marc is on course to raise £2000 and has raised an enormous amount of awareness about SUNDOWNS.

Marc has already promised an equally exciting event next year so watch this space!! 

On 01/09/06 Merseyrail held its Merseyrail/ SUNDOWNS Charity Golf Tournament at Mollington Grange Golf Club.

20 teams paid to play during the event, the proceeds of which will be donated to the charity. The day began at 12.30pm with registration. All teams returned to the club at 6.30pm where they enjoyed a BBQ.

Mr Dave Hickson presented the winners with their prizes before guests listened to after dinner speakers Dave Watson of Everton Football Club and Ron Yeats of Liverpool Football Club.
The evening ended with a charity raffle and Irish Bingo to raise more money for SUNDOWNS. Jay Ryan, comedian, entertained guests before a disco completed the night.

Never one to miss an opportunity, Paul Masters persuaded Dave Watson and Ron Yeats to sign SUNDOWNS T-shirts, which will be used to raise funds at next years SUNDOWNS ball.

This was another hugely successful event organised by Merseyrail on SUNDOWNS behalf. Many thanks to everyone at Merseyrail for their hard work, especially Sally Ralston who has worked so tirelesly to make this year the best ever for Merseyrail's support of the charity.

On 06/08/06 10 Merseyrail employees set out to travel from John O'Groats to Lands End, a total of 950 miles, in order to raise a target of £50,000.00 for SUNDOWNS.
During the 8 day event Darren Hanley, Ian McLaren, Steve Thorn, Phil Dolman, Kevin Hall, Peter Cashman, John Smith, Patrick Verwer, Rudi Boersma and Colin Melia cycled approximately 120 miles a day.

On 10/08/06 the cyclists arrived outside the SUNDOWNS office to be greeted by families of the riders, Merseyrail staff, sponsors of the event, SUNDOWNS families and the Mayor and Mayoress of Wirral.

The next day Managing Director of Merseyrail, Patrick Verwer, unfortunately had a nasty accident, which meant he had to be taken to hospital and was unable to finish the event.
The rest of the team, although understandably upset at Patrick's absense, managed to finish on time.
A huge thanks to everyone to took part, including the support team, families of the riders and sponsors of the event. Although all money has not yet been received it looks likely that the team will have hit their target.
A huge thanks too to Sally Ralston who organised this massive event.

To follow a day by day account of the ride log on to http://merseyrailend2end.org 

On 24/06/06 the first ever SUNDOWNS football match took place at the Liverpool Training Academy in Kirkby.

The event was organised by John Sheridan, parent member from Liverpool, who recruited the Liverpool side. This was the SUNDOWNS Dad's Team first game.
It was a closely fought match and the final score was 2-1 to the Liverpool side, who were presented with the Trophy seen being held by John Sheridan.
Goal scorers were Dave Jones for the SUNDOWNS Team and John Sheridan and Alan Whitrow for the Liverpool Team.
After the match everyone walked next door to the Dave Lloyd Centre were they were treated to a hot and cold buffet. At night around 20 people enjoyed a celebratory drink in Liverpool.
Plans are already in progress for a return match later in the year, when the SUNDOWNS Team hope to win back the Trophy!

SUNDOWNS would like to thank the following people :

Sonae for providing funds for the buffet.
The Academy for allowing us to use the venue.
The Dave Lloyd Centre.
Niall Cross and Justine Hughes for doing such a great job collecting money on the gates.
All the players and spectators.

Finally we would like to thank John Sheridan for organising the event and raising an amazing £450 on the day, which included £120 from Bobby Moss who shaved off his moustache to raise funds. 

Inspired by Hannah aged 3, the daughter of SUNDOWNS members Lorraine and Dave Maddocks, in April a group of friends completed the Coast To Coast cycle ride, a distance of 140 miles over 3 days from Whitehaven on the Cumbrian Coast to Tynemouth on the North East coast.

The team consisited of cyclists Dave Maddocks, Stephen Coulston, Niall Ford, Jon Hobson, Rick Long, Sean Stringer and Neil Strogen, with support team of Martin and Judith Timmins.

The team managed to raise a total of £10,351.86 which was shared equally between SUNDOWNS and the Downs Syndrome Association.

Although it was a tough challenge, the event was thoroughly enjoyed by the team and the tream are extremely proud of their personal achievement in completing the ride and also the benefit the monies raised will provide to the charities.

As well as thanking sponsors, the team would like to say a special thank you to local firm NSG Ltd of Deeside who kindly provided the transport costs for getting bikes and riders to the start at Whitehaven and back home from the finish post at Tynemouth.

SUNDOWNS would like to add a huge thanks to all concerened.

On Monday 16 January 2006 Patrick Verwer, Managing Director of Merseyrail, handed over a cheque for £7.500 to Sundowns, a Birkenhead based charity which won Merseyrail’s annual Charity of the Year poll.

Merseyrail staff voted by a large majority to nominate Sundowns as its Charity of the Year 2006 in its annual contest between charities nominated by members of staff. Sundowns was nominated by Merseyrail’s Ticket Inspector Phil Dolman who is actively involved in the charity.

Sundowns overall aim is to provide support for people with Down syndrome and their families on the Wirral. Their activities include:

• Enabling parents and siblings to form friendships and offer mutual support
• Creating an environment where families can access activities and experiences that others take for granted
• Improving maternity services
• Providing choice within education

Patrick Verwer said: "I am delighted to be able to hand this cheque over as we wholeheartedly support the work of Sundowns. We at Merseyrail are very much part of the local community and would like to express our appreciation of the work done by Sundowns"

Jane Asterley, Sundowns Chair said: "It’s fantastic; a tremendous start to 2006. It will make a world of difference to Sundowns. We look forward to the next 12 months working with the staff at Merseyrail"

Lisa Masters, Sundowns Secretary said:"We are delighted to have been chosen as Merseyrail’s charity of the year. Their donation will help us to carry out even more events and activities in order to achieve our goal of improving conditions for people with Down syndrome and their families"

Merseyrail staff will be organising events to raise further funds for Sundowns throughout 2006 to supplement the company’s contribution

A donation of £1,000 by Port Sunlight based Unilever UK Home and Personal Care, will help provide a welcome holiday break for members of Sundowns, a support group for families with Downs Syndrome children.

Employees from Port Sunlight Site Services team nominated the charity to receive funding which resulted from the company's 'Safeclean' competition. The competition is designed to raise health, safety and environmental standards across the site and demonstrate senior management commitment.

The result of the competition is a cleaner and safer workplace. This achievement is recognised by money being donated by the company to local charities.

The higher the standards, the better the score, the bigger the donation to charity!

This year's event has resulted in £20,000 being divided amongst local charities nominated by employees at the site which manufactures homecare products such as Persil, Comfort, Domestos and Surf.

Unilever UK Site Director, Gerry Hare commented. "As always, safety is our number one priority. 'Safeclean' competition is a great initiative that not only raises health and safety standards at work, but also encourages our employees to engage with local charities and support their activities."

Sundowns is a Wirral based charity committed to raising levels of awareness of Downs Syndrome and offering a strong support network for families.

Founder member and Chairperson of Sundowns, Jane Asterley said. "We would like to thank Unilever for this donation. It will help fund a long weekend break at Ribby Hall Village near Blackpool, which, for many of our families will be the only holiday they take this year." She added. "We now have over 40 families who regularly meet up and share experiences. We organise a variety of events so that all family members are able to relax and socialise together."

For further information contact
Elaine Hazlehurst
Unilever UK Home and Personal Care
0151 641 4882
August 2005