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The Lovelies
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Meet Lovelies.help, a group of women united by their love of music superstar George Michael who have raised over £190,000 for charity over the last six years! This includes a whopping £21,000 for Terrence Higgins Trust - and they’re not looking to stop any time soon.

We recently spoke to Gill from Lovelies.help, who explained about how they got started and how you can get involved.

Who are Lovelies.help?

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The Lovelies logoThe Lovelies are George’s fans. It’s a name he used himself for them on Twitter.

Lovelies.help was founded by Danish ladies Tina Hindsbo and Katja Kafling in April 2017. As George fans of many years standing, they were trying to think of a way to honour and remember George after his passing. They considered writing a book, but there were and are already a lot of books out there.

Tina came up with the idea of fans donating spare or duplicate items of memorabilia which Lovelies.help would auction for other fans to add to their collections, with the entire winning bid going directly to a charity which had been supported by George in his lifetime. Gill came on board soon after and Vicki sometime after that.  

We use the JustGiving platform for all the donations so that the winning bid goes direct to the charity. Lovelies.help never touches any of the money.

We run two or three new auctions every single day of the year except Christmas day where the page is inactive as a mark of respect. If you’d like to take a look, you’ll find us on Facebook, which is where our auctions take place, but we also share everything on Twitter and Instagram.

By 8 May 2017 we had raised our first £1,000 and it just didn’t stop! In November 2019 the total reached an incredible £100,000 and we’re currently at £190,000 split across 10 charities.

Over six years after George passed away, people are still bidding and donating, which is brilliant!

Why do you support Terrence Higgins Trust?

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Personally, I already knew about George’s support for Terrence Higgins Trust as it was quite well-known in the UK. He was always a great supporter of AIDS-related charities. He supported them in various ways, but most notably through The Concert of Hope held at Wembley Arena on Wednesday 1 December 1993. He was also often seen to be wearing the red ribbon associated with Terrence Higgins Trust.

Our principal requirement for having a charity on our list is that George supported them in his lifetime.

What project is Lovelies.help currently running?

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From time to time, Lovelies.help will take on a fundraising project for one of the charities on our list. Our current project is to raise £25,000 in support of the THT Direct helpline, run by Terrence Higgins Trust to support those needing advice about HIV and sexual health over the phone or other forms of online chat.

There will also be a plaque placed in the THT Direct office remembering George once the project is completed.

The new project has been running since 14 February 2023 and has already raised over £1,000 on JustGiving!

How can other people support Lovelies.help?

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If you have George Michael memorabilia that you'd like to donate to be auctioned off by us to raise money for Terrence Higgins Trust, please email their Fundraising team! You can also contact us directly at lovelies.help@gmail.com.

We would be so grateful for any items and always love to hear from other George fans across the world.

Thank you!

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We'd like to say a big thank you to Lovelies.help for all of their incredible support. You've made such a tremendous difference to the work we do, and your hard work and dedication means everything to us.

This updated article was originally published 15 February 2021.