Merlin's Magic Wand children's charity

Who We Help, Why We Help & the Difference It Makes

What We Do

The charity makes the magic of Merlin Entertainments accessible to these children with three magic spells:

1)      “Magical Days Out” - providing free tickets and a contribution towards travel for families to enjoy their day at a Merlin Entertainments attraction, such as LEGOLAND Windsor Resort or SEA LIFE Weymouth. It is a once-in-a-lifetime experience for children and their families. One beneficiary parent recently commented that “In the madness of all the hospital appointments it was lovely to have a day to just enjoy being a family”. So far we have given out over 750,000 tickets since 2008.

2)      “Merlin’s Magic On Tour” - delivering the magic of Merlin Entertainments to children in local communities. Teams from the attractions visit children in their local communities to take the magic of their attraction to them. For example, London Dungeons actors have done drama classes, LEGOLAND teams have run LEGO therapy sessions, and SEA LIFE Aquariums have taken an aquarist and animal models to educate children on marine life. So far, over 36,000 children have been reached with Merlin magic through this programme.

3)      “Merlin’s Magic Spaces” - transforming areas in hospitals, orphanages, educational facilities and more into amazing sensory spaces around the world. So far, we have created 52 Merlin’s Magic Spaces globally. We have also donated 13 mobile entertainment units which can be moved between hospital beds for hours of fun and escapism.

We are proud to not only support individual families, but also over 800 other charities and organisations globally every year. We add value to the incredible services that they offer by giving them tickets and travel contributions to help the families in their care have a Magical Day Out, running Magic on Tour activities for them, and gifting them one of our gorgeous Merlin's Magic Spaces or mobile units.

Volunteer

There are a number of ways that you can support Merlin's Magic Wand charity:

Fundraising

• Become a Corporate Partner or make us your Charity of the Year.
• Individual or team sponsored sporting challenges.
• Download our online fundraising pack.
  
• Have a Goodbox cashless donation unit and a poster in your reception/offices so that your clients, guests and colleagues can engage with the charity.
• Host a charity fundraising event or activity (e.g. a dinner, a bake off, a raffle, a race day).
• Provide an auction or raffle prize.
• Sponsor a Merlin’s Magic Space project (£25k).
• Encourage everyone in your company to bring in any foreign coins that might be sitting around at home and send them in one go to Cash4Coins in Poole who can then convert it into sterling and deposit into our charity bank account.
• Shop through Give as you Live (instead of Safari or Google Chrome) – a small % of your purchase could come to MMW at no extra cost to you.

 

Volunteering

• Support at an event – LEGO therapy, face painting, dancing, colouring and salt dough play. (All volunteers would need to confirm they’ve been DBS checked and agree to adhere to our charity Safeguarding Policy).
• Represent us at charity fairs and tell attendees how we help children and families that are going through a tough time.
• Volunteer at some of our fantastic events based at the Merlin Entertainments attractions.
• Are you a student requiring work experience or do you have some special skills that you could offer the charity for free? Contact us to let us know how you can help.
  

Support

• Follow us on social media and share our posts.
• Raise awareness of our Magical Days Out (free tickets and travel support) programme so that more families and charitable organisations can benefit from our services. We are already proud to support organisations like Diverse Abilities Plus, Julia’s House Hospice, Make-A-Wish Foundation, CLIC Sargent and over 800 other organisations despite our relatively small operations (we have a little team of 8!).
• If you have benefitted from a Magical Day Out, please leave us a Facebook review and upload any photos that you are happy for us to share publicly to raise awareness of our work. Also, tell any eligible families that could benefit from a day out that we exist and want to help them.
• If you are able to offer any free PR or advertising space, we would be very grateful for this opportunity to raise our profile and help more families understand how we can help them.
  

Community Trail