LORRAINE AND CHRIS HAVE RAISED £500,000 FOR ICKLE PICKLES
Ickle Pickles Hampshire has been a big part of our life at Blitz Photography for the last 7 years, almost entirely because of Lorraine Blackburn and her husband Chris.
Tragically they lost their son Owen during his stay at the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit in Portsmouth. But during one of the darkest moments in their lives, they chose to help others going through the same ordeal they had just experienced. They resolved to raise £1,000 for the neonatal charity Ickle Pickles.
Ickle Pickles Hampshire raise funds for vital equipment in the hospital neonatal units across the region, helping medical professional save the lives of the most vulnerable premature babies.
Lorraine contacted us in 2015 for a raffle prize which we were happy to supply. The charity appealed to Georgina and me because our son John had received such amazing support in neonatal units at Portsmouth and Southampton.
Pretty soon we became more involved when Lorraine called with a last minute emergency after her event photographer could not make the Ickle Pickles summer ball and asked us to fill in.
We have continued to supported Ickle Pickles at events all over the area ever since. Soon we had an idea to produce a charity calendar. 2023 will see us complete our 6th annual calendar. These calendars feature portraits of 72 children who have at the beginning of their lives needed to spent time on a NICU or PICU ward. Lorraine and Chris’s daughter Luna has feature each year since 2019 when she was just a baby.
The calendars have so far raised over £20,000, which has made us particularly proud.
Without Lorraine, this would not have been possible.
Lorraine and Chris have beaten their initial target of £1,000 and gone on to raise over £500,000.
We thank her for her service with Ickle Pickles and to her and Chris we give our very best wishes for the future.
