A team of National Lottery winners will be handing over the keys of a giant Gingerbread playhouse to a hospice in Middlesbrough to mark this year’s #givingtuesday.

With a combined wealth of over £25 million, the lottery winners will be giving Santa and his elves a run for their money, when they turn a simple wood cabin into a magical super-sized gingerbread playhouse for the charity.

Zoe’s Place Baby Hospice provides incredible palliative, respite and end-of-life care to very young children aged from birth to five years suffering from life-limiting or life-threatening conditions. Designed to be a ‘home away from home’, the hospice ensures families have the opportunity to spend valuable time with their other children or have the chance to catch up on much needed sleep.

The lottery winners from across the region will have to work tirelessly over 24 hours to create the Gingerbread house and transform it into a winter wonderland, filling it with gifts and toys for the hospice and young visitors to enjoy. They will be using more than 100 litres of paint, 60 paintbrushes, 30 rollers, 40 bespoke wooden shapes, 6 sacks of fake snow and 25 metres of twinkly lights, to finish the cabin for the Zoe’s Place team.

And the very next day (29th November 2017), the new Gingerbread House will be used as Santa’s grotto when the Hospice officially turns on its Christmas lights for staff, families and supporters to enjoy.

Mark Guidery, General Manager at Zoe’s Place said:

“We are absolutely over-joyed that lottery winners have chosen to come to us and spend their time creating something so wonderful.

“We could never have dreamed of owning something like this. It is absolutely fantastic and will bring hours of joy to so many children, including the siblings of our poorly children. We genuinely cannot thank everyone enough for their kindness, time and generosity”

Anya Reynolds from The National Lottery team said: “Zoe’s Place has a magical feel about it and the staff are incredible. We are delighted to be able to create such a colourful gingerbread playhouse which will hopefully bring lots of joy to the young people here, their siblings and their families. We can’t wait to get stuck in!”

#givingtuesday is an international campaign led in the UK by the Charities Aid Foundation (CAF). It encourages people to ‘do good stuff’ for causes they care about following the shopping frenzy of Black Friday and Cyber Monday. More than 1,600 organisations including major charities and businesses are signed up to take part.