Cheadle Hulme’s Rainbow88 raises £££s for local charities
"During lockdown we closed for 9 weeks and I decided to cook at home for the community. To date I have now cooked 3,000 meals on my own in my little kitchen at home. I had a break when we re opened the restaurant on 4th July and started again in November."
Linda Lam, owner of Cheadle Hulme favourite Chinese restaurant Rainbow88 for 21 years, is the epitome of determination having overcome her own challenges on her way to raising nearly £300,000 for local charities – “nothing stops me!”
Working to help her local community before and during the coronavirus pandemic, Linda is passionate about helping others even managing to think of others in raising £20,000 while fighting her own battle against breast cancer 3 years ago.
Looking after others and staying connected in her local community is important to Linda and is what motivated her to carry on helping others, even during lockdown:
“During lockdown we closed for 9 weeks and I decided to cook at home for the community. To date I have now cooked 3,000 meals on my own in my little kitchen at home. I had a break when we re opened the restaurant on 4th July and started again in November.
“Ingredients, containers, bags, stickers were donated by local businesses, residents, friends and customers and even my wok and chopping boards have been replaced by generous members of the community.
“I also had several bakers on board who went out with drivers to deliver my meals.”
Linda mainly used Facebook to tell people what she was doing and asked followers and friends to nominate people for a treat: groups of staff in hospitals and care homes, key workers, those isolating, those struggling or simply anyone who needed a pick me up:
“We also treated anyone who went that extra mile to help us. Everyone just wanted to join in and it just needed me to co ordinate it.”
During lockdown Linda has also raised around £5000 for local charities by hosting small, socially-distanced events (when the restrictions allowed her to) and selling raffle tickets to my take away customers and auctioning hampers! “I repeat nothing stops me!”
Linda is forever wanting to find ways to help people. Right now the English Government are helping many Chinese families to move over here from Hong Kong and Linda is helping them to settle down:
“I also have acted as an interpreter for Chinese who cannot speak English including patients with mental illness.
The passion in me to help others is neverending!”
On behalf of One Stockport, we would like to thank Linda for all the great, selfless work she is doing to keep communities connected.
