Christmas Tree Festival Winners Announced!

Congratulations! With 19% of the overall votes, coming first place in the festival is Slimming World Milton Keynes with Jane, supporting Alzheimer's Research.

Slimming World Milton Keynes with Jane is an award winning, super supportive weight loss group running from venues in Stony Stratford, Wolverton, Old Stratford and Olney. Whilst losing lb's we are also committed to raising £'s for Alzheimer's Research a disease which has impacted so many of us.

As a failed dieter for over 25 years, Slimming World enabled me to lose weight without ever feeling hungry and after reaching my target weight with a loss of over 11 stone, I decided that I would like to help others achieve their goals.

Losing weight is easy when you have a fantastic plan, however changing the habits of a lifetime around how we think and feel about food is much harder. As an organisation we have over 50 years experience in the psychology of slimming and our friendly groups offer support without judgement or humiliation with other like minded people.

To find out more check out our facebook page - Slimming World Milton Keynes with Jane, or give me a call on 07886 808205

Jane's Dad was formally diagnosed with Alzheimer’s and Vascular Dementia in 2017 although there had been signs for many years before that.

The diagnosis was devastating for him and all of Jane's family. To stand by and watch an articulate and intelligent man lose his vocabulary and sense of identity was soul destroying. Changes in personality and mood meant that the person they knew and loved gradually disappeared along with his memories.

Congratulations! With 14% of the overall votes, coming second place in the festival is Medical Detection Dogs, supporting Medical Detection Dogs.

There are two types of four legged heroes working for Medical Detection Dogs:

1. Medical Alert Assistance Dogs support individuals with complex health conditions such as Type 1 diabetes, POTS and non-epileptic seizures by alerting them to an impending life-threatening medical episode. They typically give them a 5-10 minute warning so they can take the necessary action and avoid injury, hospitalisation, embarrassment and drama. As well as saving their lives they restore them, by giving them back their confidence and independence.
2. Bio Detection Dogs are trained to accurately detect the odour of human diseases such as Cancer, Malaria and Parkinson’s from samples in the charity’s training room. This pioneering work could lead to dogs playing an important role in screening for diseases and improving patient care in hospitals. Beyond this, the charity’s vision is to help scientists and medics develop faster, cheaper and non-invasive methods of diagnosis that could impact on thousands of lives.

Dogs are the best biosensors on the planet. They have 300 million scent receptors in their noses, compared to a human’s 5 million, and can detect odour at parts per trillion. This is the equivalent of being able to smell a teaspoon of sugar in 2 Olympic-sized swimming pools.

We take the welfare of our Medical Detection Dogs extremely seriously. From the moment they come to us as puppies we ensure the highest standards of care for our dogs. We have a strict no kennel policy and all our dogs live in the homes of our staff or fantastic local volunteers where they are loved and cared for as part of the family.

This year we are celebrating our 15th Anniversary, 15 years of giving our clients their lives’ back. We are proud to say that we have placed over 200 lifesaving dogs and we are excited to look forward at what we can achieve in the future. We do not receive any government funding to carry out our life saving work, which means that we rely on the generosity of our Corporate Partners, our Supporters, Charitable Trusts and Foundations and incredible people like you, Members of the Public to fund our life-saving work.

To find out more, including how you can support the Medical Detection Dogs, click here

Congratulations! With 9% of the overall votes, coming third place in the festival is Two Flags Limited, supporting local charity Emily's Star.

Two Flags are a local, owner operated business that attends many events and festivals with their converted horse boxes. Two Flags work on a range of events from small school fetes, to larger festivals and corporate events. They take pride in providing the very best food and use local produce in their offerings.

Emily's Star has been supporting children and babies in Milton Keynes for over 11 years. We offer support to families who have a child or children with a life threatening or life limiting condition, from birth until the age of 25. We provide this support through a number of means, from 121 sessions, memory making activities, large group events and yearly wishes, we tailor our support to each family. Alongside this we also support families of premature babies, we donate clothing and emergency care packs to any hospital within the UK, from our full neonatal boxes to Milton Keynes hospital, to our post-able mini packs which can be sent anywhere in the UK. Everything we do is at no costs to our families, all our events are covered by our fundraising and all the mini packs are posted completely free of charge. We do all of this in memory of Emily, who passed away aged 26 days after being diagnosed at birth with Trisomy 18, the UK's second most common syndrome after Downs Syndrome.

Find out more and see how you can support Emily's Star here