Darlington girl raises £300 for sick grandad

Ruby Anthony, from Darlington, started raising money for her grandad who is suffers from Parkinson's disease and was recently diagnosed with prostate cancer.

After selling her chocolate treats around the neighbourhood she raised £300 and is even helping the local Slimming World group by handing out leaflets after which she has been promised a £100 donation.

Hayley Anthony, Ruby's mam, said: “Over the last few years she’s been doing carol singing at Christmas time and she’d maybe make about £10 to £20 just collecting money around the neighbourhood.

“But with the current situation I didn’t feel comfortable with her knocking on doors with the pandemic and everything.

“This year she’s been doing little arts and crafts while she was in isolation, and she started making little candle tea lights and she was making them into snowmen and she was enjoying doing those.

“And she said do you think I could do these and maybe raise some money for Grandad and I said well that would be lovely.

"She made a chocolate Christmas pudding with a terries chocolate orange covered in Maltesers and she asked if she could sell them to raise money for Grandad.

“She hoped to sell five, but she’s at 35 now and she’s raised over £300 and the money is going towards Parkinson’s Disease which is what my dad has.

“He was also more vulnerable and is more likely to pick up more infections and last year he was in hospital with sepsis twice and the second time he was in intensive care and his organs started to fail and he was on critical for the next 24 hours.

“fortunately, he is still with us today but when he was discharged he was diagnosed with prostate cancer so he’s been fighting that this year and been getting treatment for that.

“Ruby’s been raising money to go towards Parkinson’s and prostate cancer UK and she’s just wanting to make money to help people like her Grandad.

“And while she’s been doing it the local Slimming World Group consultants reached out to Ruby and said she had a lot of leaflets to be delivered and she couldn’t possibly manage on her own.

“So she wanted Ruby to help save the Slimming World group as they’re struggling at the moment, by sending our leaflets, she would donate £100 to Ruby’s fundraising, so that’s another huge bonus for the fundraising.

“The local newsletter has gone out to the Parkinson’s group yesterday and as a result Ruby has managed to get more orders in so it’s just going crazy.

“She’s such a good girl she comes in from school, gets washed and changed and has her tea and is straight on doing her little order book, she’s just marvellous."

“What she’s doing is really keeping her grandad going and it’s lovely for him to see.

“Her initial goal was £50 and just in her first day she got £65, and then it got up to £200 and now the consultant from slimming world has offered to pay £100 so now she’s up to £300 now.

“Now she’s in a second wave now it seems now the Parkinson’s newsletter has come out, she thought she was all done and now she’s got more to do, it’s just going beyond what she ever thought she could do.

“Everyone’s just saying you must be so proud of her you know a 12 year old girl and she’s taking it all on and she’s just marvellous she really is.

“We had a gofundme set up, but they were taking quite a profit from it and after we read up on it they’d made quite a lot from Captain Tom when he used them.

“She’s literally just got a little red bucket that she carries and it’s just filling up with cash.”

If anyone would like to buy one of Ruby's Christmas treats you can contact Hayley Anthony on: 07890 236899