NSPCC Child’s Voice Appeal gets £100,000 from Bonita Trust

Press Release - 01 July 2009

The Bonita Trust has donated £100,000 to the NSPCC to update its ChildLine technical infrastructure and purchase essential equipment so that more children can get help from its ChildLine service.

Every year ChildLine receives around 2.3 million calls but counsellors are only able to answer around two-thirds of these.

In response, the NSPCC launched the £50m Child's Voice Appeal last September to develop its ChildLine service, the 24 hour, confidential helpline for worried children and young people.

Ruth Parasol de Leon, founding member of Bonita's Advisory Board said: "We are delighted to make this donation to ChildLine, knowing that will allow many more children in desperate situations to speak to a counsellor and access the help and reassurance that they need."

NSPCC fundraiser Claire Arnott said: "The Bonita Trust's support of the Child's Voice Appeal is fantastic news. The donation will help us modernise our call handling enabling us to answer more calls and provide a better service to children.

"The money has already helped us buy vital equipment, including new PCs, for our ChildLine bases across the UK. It will also help us update our infrastructure so we can answer more calls and offer children a wider choice of how they contact us."

Ends

Media office on 0207 825 2533 out of hours mobile 07976 206 625

Notes to editors

The NSPCC is the UK's leading children's charity specialising in child protection and the prevention of cruelty to children. The NSPCC's purpose is to end cruelty to children FULL STOP. The NSPCC runs projects and services across the United Kingdom and Channel Islands, including ChildLine, the UK's free, confidential 24-hour helpline for children and young people.

The  Bonita Trust   is an independent philanthropic trust based in Gibraltar and was founded in 2004.  Since 2008, Bonita has extended its programmes internationally and now works with charities in India, Afghanistan, the UK and Israel.

Bonita's philanthropic donations are focused on the community in the broadest sense of the word -  helping children in need of education and pastoral care;  helping to support and  train women in enterprise; providing medical equipment and  basic sanitation and water to enable communities to exist.  Bonita also provides technological expertise in order to help charities promote themselves on the internet and increase their reach, and therefore their delivery of support.

Bonita was recently recognised by the Gibraltar Heritage Trust which awarded the Trust the Group Heritage Award in recognition of the contributions made towards the protection of Gibraltar's heritage

As an independent philanthropic trust, Bonita is managed by a professional Trustee, who is advised by the International Advisory Board.

For further information please contact Mary Glanville at info@bonitatrust.org, www.bonitatrust.org

The Child's Voice Appeal, which launched on 22 September 2008, aims to raise £50m so that the NSPCC's vital helplines can answer many more cries for help. To date the appeal has raised £14.8m.

The government has pledged £30m over four years towards the expansion of ChildLine and the NSPCC Helpline, but the NSPCC needs the support of the public to raise a further £50m through the Child's Voice Appeal, to make its vision a reality.

Everyone can support the Child's Voice Appeal at www.childsvoiceappeal.org.uk