Your favourite local paper is giving local charities the chance to take a share of an amazing £128k cash giveaway.

Our parent company’s charitable arm, The Gannett Foundation, is providing £128k in cash to support local charities across the country and we are delighted to have a £16k share to give away in our area.

As an example, last year the Will Mackaness Trust was awarded £3,452.33 thanks to votes from readers.

We asked YOU to decide where this money should be spent. You nominated in your thousands and our editorial team chose a shortlist of ten charities from these nominations that will share in the £16k.

Top 10:

• Weymouth Food Bank

• Routes to Roots

• Cancer Support Salisbury

• Andover Food Bank

• Friends of Vigo Primary school

• Jane Scarth House Romsey Cancer Support Centre

• The Winchester Beacon

• Cornwall Independent Poverty Forum

• The Sophie Barringer trust

• Ability Dogs 4 Young People

Now we are putting the power to allocate the cash back into the hands of our readers – you are now invited to collect tokens from our newspapers which can then be sent to collection points across our region or posted. Each token collected will then be used to allocate cash to the nominated charity – so if your favourite charity collects 50% of all to tokens collected, it will receive 50% of the £16,000!

Collection points can be found on our website.

*Newsquest terms and conditions will apply where relevant to the grants process; please visit http://www.newsquest.co.uk/prize-competition-rules. Personal data will be used by Newsquest and its agents solely for the administration of the grants process and will not be shared with any third party; our general privacy notice is at: http://www.newsquest.co.uk/privacy-policy. This campaign will be published in multiple Newsquest publications across this Newsquest region. The 10 charities chosen by the local editorial panel will be voted for by our readers. The value of the grant awarded to each of the 10 charities will be calculated pro rata according to their share of the vote. Only original voting coupons will be accepted, no photocopies. The cash grants will be sent by BACS transfer. Grants are conditional on completion of the relevant project and a successful nominee charity may be required to evidence its use of the grant. The top 10 charities selected for the vote will be contacted to provide additional information for entry into the readers’ vote; should this information not be provided within the timescale provided then the editorial panel will select an alternative charity. The charity must be registered with the Charities Commission and have not received a grant from the Gannett Foundation in the last two years.