Hermitage Park School Association’s Playground Development project has been chosen as one of three community projects to receive funding of up to £12,000 from the Tesco Bags of Help initiative – and they need your vote! Continue reading From grim to great: help transform Hermitage Park playground
Supermarket chain Tesco has announced that the environmental charities Keep Scotland Beautiful and Keep Wales Tidy will benefit from an estimated £1.8m raised from carrier bag charges.
Compulsory charging for plastic carrier bags is to be introduced in Scotland next month. It is already in force in Wales, where it has raised more than £2.3m to support wildlife charity RSPB’s conservation work since 2011.
More than 27,000 Tesco customers took part in the vote to choose the beneficiaries of the levy, which is expected to be worth about £1m in Scotland and about £800,000 in Wales. Both charities, which were chosen from a list of 120 organisations, are planning to use the money to fund a variety of projects to keep local communities clean, green and tidy. The partnerships will run from 20 October 2014 for at least a year.
Greg Sage, community director for Tesco, said: “Our customers are the ones who will pay the charge, so we really wanted them to choose the charities that will benefit from it. The response was had was absolutely incredible – 27,000 people voted which is a fantastic turnout.
“Since 2011, the carrier bag levy in Wales has raised over £2.3 million for the local RSPB, which has been used for vital conservation work. Keep Scotland Beautiful and Keep Wales Tidy now have a fantastic opportunity to use the money raised from the bag charge to make a real difference to the communities they serve.”
Derek Robertson, chief executive of Keep Scotland Beautiful (KSB), said: “This is fantastic news for KSB and a tremendous opportunity for Scotland, a country whose people, organisations and institutions have really wrapped their arms around KSB and shown that they care about their environment by voting for Scotland’s own environmental charity.
“We would like to thank everyone who voted for us. We cannot wait to get started. Lots of local community groups and organisations that work in partnership with us, from all across Scotland, will benefit from this funding.”
Nominations also opened this week for the 2014 Tesco Charity Trust Community Awards Scheme, worth £200,000. The scheme will make one-off donations of between £500 and £2,500 to registered charities and not-for-profit organisations for working on local projects that support health, opportunities for young people and environmental sustainability.
There’s still time to donate food items to support Tesco’s Neighbourhood Food Challenge.
Tesco is hosting a nationwide food collection from 3 – 5 July with foodbank charity Trussell Trust and food redistribution charity FareShare, and the group hopes that customers and colleagues will collect five million meals for people in need.
This is Tesco’s fourth Neighbourhood Food Collection since the initiative was launched in December 2012. So far they have collected 10 million meals for people in need around the UK with the last collection in December 2013 achieving 4.3 million donated meals.
Tesco will also be topping up total donations by a further 30%.
This weekend has been chosen because Tesco research found that “people are usually less generous in the Summer months than at other times of the year”. Only 7% of people surveyed said that they were at their most charitable during the Summer – yet many low-income families find the summer particularly hard as children no longer benefit from free school meals.
In July and August last year Trussell Trust foodbanks alone gave emergency food to 133,539 people, including 47,639 children. The charity expects demand to be higher this Summer.
Thousands of volunteers from the Trussell Trust and the FareShare network are involved over the weekend campaign, as will hundreds of volunteers from the British Red Cross. FareShare will distribute some of the donated food to some of the other 1,290 charities that it supports.
Lindsay Boswell, CEO of FareShare said: “As the research shows, people are more generous at Christmas when it’s easier to remember those in need. However, we are urging people to give generously once more and not forget that the summer is also a difficult time for many as they struggle to provide for their families during the long break”.
Tesco staff and customers have raised £11.85 million in one year for Cancer Research UK, its charity of the year. The money was raised by staff, customers and suppliers at more than 3,000 stories, offices and distribution centres across the UK, and according to Tesco this is the largest amount ever raised by a business and charity partnership in one year.
In-store fundraising activities by Tesco included a donation of 0.0125p from Tesco Personal Finance PLC every time a cash machine was used at Tesco until 29 February 2013, and promotions that encouraged Clubcard customers to donate their points to the charity.
The store that raised the most money was Tesco Extra in Dundee, which raised £22,000.
The funds raised are being used for 32 early diagnosis and detection research projects helping to ensure more people receive treatment at a time when it is more likely to be successful.
During the partnership Tesco also helped Cancer Research UK raise awareness of the early signs and symptoms of cancer. Eight million health information leaflets were placed at store checkouts.
Richard Taylor, Cancer Research UK Executive Director of Fundraising and Marketing, said: “Tesco staff, customers and suppliers have gone above and beyond to raise a record-breaking amount of money for our lifesaving work over the past year. The dedication they have put into raising vital funds to help improve the early diagnosis and detection of cancer particularly during a time of economic uncertainty has been truly inspiring.”
Since 1988 Tesco has chosen a different charity every year to benefit from staff and customer fundraising. The company’s Charity Trust tops up staff fundrasing by 20% up to a maximum of £500,000.
Last month Tesco announced that Diabetes UK will be it’s next charity of the year.
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