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. 

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.

Jane Scarth House, is a Romsey-based charity. They offer free support available for those affected by cancer, both patients and their families.

Services include counselling, complementary therapies, befriending, information, meditation, Qigong, Macmillan HOPE courses, regular clinics for finance/welfare and legal issues and bereavement support.

A spokesman said: "We are seeing very high demand for our services, particularly counselling and we would like to offer more counselling sessions each week to ensure that people are seen quickly, at the time that they really need the support. We have four self-employed, professional counsellors working throughout the week to provide appointments at convenient times.

READ MORE: Cash for charities: How to nominate your favourite charities in for a cash boost

"Each counselling session costs the charity £25 and a counsellor would usually see five clients per day. Therefore an additional day of counselling would cost £125, approximately £500 per month. We would be grateful for funding to cover a number of months for these additional sessions."

The Winchester Beacon provide emergency accommodation and tailored support to people experiencing homelessness.

Residents have access to free counselling, psychotherapy, substance misuse support, tenancy training, budgeting advice, job search support and more.

They are trying to refurbish a communal bathroom which has not been updated since 1997. For eight small bathroom units, it will cost in the region of £80,000. 

Andover foodbank, based at St John the Baptist RC Church, need funds for children's gift boxes and festive food hampers they provide to support families who are struggling financially. 

Any share of the £16,000 will go towards providing additional content for gift boxes or food hampers.

Friends of Vigo Primary School, in Andover, want to raise funds to provide additional items for the pupils that are not included within the budget. This includes an outdoor slide for the playing field to be enjoyed by all year groups.

The Sophie Barringer Trust, in Eastleigh, support the social, emotional and educational welfare of children fighting cancer or other life limiting illnesses. They want to upgrade their current facilities.

The other nominated charities in the south are: Cancer Support Salisbury, Cornwall Independent Poverty Forum, Routes to Roots (Poole), Weymouth Foodbank and Ability Dogs 4 Young People IoW.

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 per cent of all tokens collected, it will receive 50 per cent of the £16,000.