STAFF at the Lancashire Evening Telegraph have helped to swell the funds for the John Mark Riding Fund, after raising more than £200 through a raffle.
The fund, launched in a bid to raise enough money to send four-year-old John Mark to America for life saving drug treatment for a brain tumour, is now nearing the £3,000 mark.
The LET's assistant editor (news) Andrew Turner, presented the money and the winning prize of a teddy bear - donated to the fund by the winner, editor Kevin Young - to John Mark's sister Kerry Riding, from Audley.
She will be giving the teddy to John himself when she visits him in hospital in Bristol in two weeks' time to celebrate his fifth birthday.
She said: "Everyone has been so generous. The teddy is lovely, I'm sure he will love it. We are planning to have a big party for his birthday."
He is currently undergoing radiotherapy treatment at Frenchay Hospital in Bristol in an attempt to shrink the tumour, which is on his brain stem, making it impossible to operate on.
Funds have also come in from Blackburn woman Lillian Foulds, who raised £542 through a sponsored head shave, ith the help of staff and customers at the Fox and Hounds pub in Ewood.
And brothers Kevin and Seamus Hamill are halfway through their epic sponsored bike ride from Blackburn to Land's End, near John Mark's new home in Cornwall, which they started on Monday .
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