IT'S a lot of money - but such a sum could make an enormous difference to desperately ill children. Today the Evening Press launches the Guardian Angels appeal to raise £300,000 for a life-saving children's unit at York Hospital.

As we know from past appeals, Press readers are unstinting in their generosity. And if £300,000 sounds a lot, remember that between us we managed to raise £2 million for St Leonard's Hospice.

Such appeals are organised by the Evening Press for the benefit of the community, but they really belong to the readers. It is the people of York and surrounding areas who raise the money - it is your generosity and kind-heartedness which will guarantee the success of this appeal.

We need your help and your ingenuity. Money can be raised in so many ways, from straight donations to imaginative fund raising, such as a sponsored bungee jump or parachute dive.

And there could not be a better cause. At present, seriously ill children admitted to York Hospital are looked after in a room close to the nurses' station. They receive the highest standards of care possible, but monitors and other vital equipment has to be brought in from elsewhere in the hospital.

The money raised by the appeal will pay for two life-saving high-dependency rooms with their own equipment.

Children struck down by illnesses from meningitis to convulsions will be looked after by a specialist high-dependency nurse - and, importantly, will be less likely to face the stressful possibility of being transferred to another hospital.

So now is the time to think of the children and to start giving.

Updated: 10:38 Monday, October 10, 2005