Now your Ukraine stamps help cancer battle
GENEROUS readers who sent cheques to help Ukrainian refugees can be proud of helping another worthy cause as well.
Envelopes enclosing around 70,000 cheques which were sent to the Mail Force appeal are being donated to the Bone Cancer Research Trust (BCRT) so that the stamps can go towards raising funds for its lifesaving research work.
Dozens of bags full of envelopes have been delivered to the charity’s headquarters in Leeds and volunteers will cut out the stamps, which will be sorted and sold in bulk by weight.
The trust receives up to £20 a kilogram by selling the stamps to amateur and professional collectors across the country. Collectors will often buy large bags of stamps to look for certain postmarks. Unusual stamps and ones with slight defects can also be snapped up by collectors to improve their private collections.
Envelopes donated for previous Mail Force appeals to raise funds for computers for children and to buy personal protective equipment for frontline health workers were also passed on to the cancer charity.
The Ukraine refugee appeal was kick-started with £500,000 from DMGT, the Mail’s parent company, at the request of Lord and Lady Rothermere, and has raised more than £11.5million so far. Laura Riach, the cancer charity’s head of fundraising and communications, said: ‘We would like to thank the Daily Mail for donating their used stamps to the Bone Cancer Research Trust’s Stamp Appeal. We will turn these stamps into vital funds for our life-saving work, which will truly make a difference to all those affected by primary bone cancer. Last year our Stamp Appeal raised an incredible £11,835.’
About 560 people are diagnosed with primary bone cancer in the UK every year, with around 355 annual deaths. Since BCRT was formed in 2006, it has awarded over £5.3million for research into finding a cure and funded 106 research projects.