- Nov 29, 2016
- 3 min read

Emma raises over £2,000 at the Formby Christmas Shopping night for Ormskirk Neonatal Unit

The Family Christmas Shopping Evening took place on Friday 25th November at St Jerome's Parish Club.

It was a fantastic night that started with 4 year old Theo Graham opening the event singing in Spanish. He then followed on with a Christmas song. Theo who was born ten weeks premature and he is the main reason why his mum, Emma Graham works so hard fund raising for the Neonatal. Emma said: "Theo is the reason we as a family fundraise. Now him being a little bit older, he wanted to be involved in the night and it was totally his own idea what he did. He was so confident, so much so, he sang again later on before coming home to bed, we are so proud of him."

The shoppers enjoyed singing from St Jerome's School Choir, Make Noise 2 (debut performance), PopVox Formby (debut performance) and Amanda Neale's Singing Academy. They were all absolutely fantastic! There was also Street Dance group - Lil Beatz, dancing their hearts out at only their 2nd performance, and Theo was also involved with this group.

Emma went on to say: "We had 26 local businesses selling their Christmas products and there was some fantastic items and bargains on the night. Father Christmas came during the event and stayed for a few hours, he was absolutely fantastic with the children and we even saw him having a dance to some of the songs. During the night we gave out Goody bags to the first 50 adults through the door, we had a fantastic raffle with 56 prizes to be won, a tombola, name the teddy, and 'Guess the weight of the teddy'. There was a fantastic atmosphere all night and everyone seemed to enjoy themselves."

"We raised a fantastic £1822.35 on Friday for Ormskirk Neonatal Unit, but then over the weekend we received a phone call from Formby resident Bob Brady who wanted to make a donation. My mum went to collect it today and it was an extremely generous and kind donation of £250 making our total of £2072.35 for the unit. A huge thankyou to Bob and to everyone who supported us during the night, to all the businesses who attended or donated prizes, to the cake bakers who made cakes for the event, to all our helpers both setting up during the night and finally to my family for all your support. Our total raised for this year from all our events is £4828.17 Thankyou so so much to everyone who has supported us throughout 2016 at all our events, our helpers, stallholders, venues, performers, businesses, my family, it really is appreciated and the unit will be extremely grateful for this money.All our raffle winners from Friday have now all been contacted, congratulations to all our winners. We hope you all have a Merry Christmas and a very Happy New Year!"

A huge well done to Emma and her team and this incredible amount will be presented to the Neonatal Unit over the next week and it will go towards vital equipment of monitors and incubators.

Well done everyone!