YOUR favourite local paper is giving local charities the chance to share in a whopping £125k cash giveaway.

Our parent company’s charitable arm, The Gannett Foundation, is providing £125,000 in cash to support local charities across the country - and we are delighted to have a £20,000 share to give away in our area.

And we asked YOU to decide where this money should be spent.

You nominated in your thousands and our editorial team chose a shortlist of Wales and West charities from these nominations that will share in the £20,000.

In Wales and West the shortlist is: Motion Control Dance; Sparkle; Helping Caring Team; 2Wish; Phoenix Bereavement Support; Ethos – Extending The Hand Of Support (known as The Living Room); Chard & District Museum; St Giles Animal Rescue.

2Wish - formerly  2 Wish Upon a Star - supports families who have lost children and young adults aged 25 or under.

Rhian Burke from Pembrokeshire set up the charity following the death of her son George, aged 12 months, and her husband, Paul, just five days later in February, 2012.

George, a happy and healthy baby, suddenly suffered a series of fits and despite doctors’ best efforts could not be saved.

Unable to cope with the grief, five days later Paul took his own life. He was later diagnosed as suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder.

Rhian believes that if she and her husband had been given more support following George’s death, Paul would still be alive.

She set up 2Wish to ensure other families do get the support, counselling and advice needed following the death of a young person.

These support groups offer additional help as well as advice and guidance from others who have gone through similar experiences.

The charity has received an incredible reaction and its services are now being spread across Wales.

Now, we are putting the power to allocate the cash back into the hands of our readers – during November, you are invited to collect tokens from our newspapers which can be sent to collection points across our region, or posted.

Each token collected will be used to allocate cash to the nominated charity - so if your favourite charity collects 50 per cent of all the tokens collected, it will receive 50 per cent of the £20,000.

Collection points are at:

  • Golden Lion Store, Pen y Banc Road, Ammanford
  • Sycamore Stores, St Issel Avenue, Haverfordwest
  • Londis, St Thomas Green, Haverfordwest
  • Dew Street Post Office, Haverfordwest
  • Brynhoffnant Londis, Brynhoffnant
  • Tesco, Cardigan