LAST week the Lancashire Telegraph launched its 'Pennine Lancashire: Where Great Things Happen' campaign, celebrating all that is great about the area.

Today we take a look at the region's charitable spirit and the lengths that people will go to to help those in need.

PENNINE Lancashire folk are some of the most generous people around - and the hundreds of thousands of pounds they have raised proves it.

Generosity seems to know no bounds in the area, with people volunteering their time, donating items, giving what money they can and putting themselves through gruelling challenges to raise money for those in need.

In 2011 the Lancashire Telegraph launched its Raise The Roof campaign to raise £125,000 to replace the roof on the inpatients unit at East Lancashire Hospice. And the readers did us proud.

Within just nine months the full amount was raised. The community not only donated money to the cause, they organised their own events to further boost the funds.

Events included sponsored walks, garden parties, pub crawls, auctions, bucket collections, cycle rides, fashion shows, community feasts. People also donated birthday, anniversary and Christmas money, and saved up pocket money to donate to the cause.

The full total was reached on Christmas Eve - and the Hospice said it was the best present they could have asked for.

And across Pennine Lancashire, communities from all faiths come together to raise money for worthy causes.

Former Blackburn mayor, Councillor Salim Mulla, pledged to raise £40,000 to fund a new kidney dialysis machine at the Royal Blackburn Hospital during his year in office.

He received such tremendous backing that he was able to hand over two new dialysis machines to the town’s hospital after raising £70k.

When handing over the machinery, he said the equipment was a gift 'from all the people of Blackburn with Darwen'.

Cllr Mulla, the former chairman of the Lancashire Council of Mosques, wanted to raise awareness of kidney disease because his wife and former mayoress Sayeeda had to wait six years to find a suitable match for a transplant after developing the illness just over eight years ago.

She is now in good health thanks to the treatment.

Group events such as the Race For Life, which has races in Blackburn and Burnley each year, sees thousands of women put on their trainers and take part in either the 5k or 10k races.

Each year the events raise tens of thousands of pounds for Cancer Research, for research into all 200 types of cancer.

Tonight (Wednesday) over 1,700 women will descend on Witton Park in Blackburn to show cancer who's boss. Many of them will be messages pinned to their back saying who they are running for or in memory of.

But it's not just the large-scale event which get the backing of the charitable people of East Lancashire.

Social media proved its worth when the devastating tale of Gladys Riley, the 93-year-old Haslingden woman whose handbag was cunningly stolen, was been shared thousands of times across Facebook and Twitter.

Shortly after the story broke, the community rallied round to raise money for the pensioner and a fund-raising page was set up by local woman Selina Hope to collect £100 for her.

To her surprise and delight, the pot stood just shy of £1,000 within just days with people queuing up to lend their support.

The reaction is reminiscent, albeit on a smaller scale, of the public support shown for attack victim Alan Barnes in the north east.