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February 2018
News
Local groups benefit from Tesco’s community fund
By Laura Mortimore hree local organisations are currently battling it out to receive the maximum amount of funding from the Tesco Bags of Help fund. Blue tokens are being given out to customers at Tesco stores across the Stokes to vote for the three different projects until 28th February, when they will all be collected and counted. The group with the highest number of tokens will receive £4,000; the second highest will receive £2,000 and the third will receive £1,000 towards their projects. Since the Bags of Help scheme launched in 2015, Tesco have given over £48 million to 10,000 community projects across the UK. These projects have come from a variety of community groups, charities, schools, clubs and organisations. The projects that are selected to go to voting are ones which will benefit the local community, such as: • Purchasing items for local groups such as sports equipment, medical equipment or gardening equipment • Making improvements to a community building • Developing outdoor spaces such as play areas, parks, school grounds and woodlands • Running a community event or supporting seasonal activities Once three projects have been shortlisted to go to the public vote, the voting will remain open
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for two months where, during that time, customers can collect blue tokens from the checkout each time they shop in order to vote for their preferred project.
November/December vote
During November and December, the 1st Bradley Stoke Scouts, Bradley Stoke Woodcraft Folk and Brentry Primary School were shortlisted to go to the public vote. At the end of December, the tokens across the Tesco stores were all collected and counted and the winners have now been announced. The 1st Bradley Stoke Scout Group received the highest number of votes and will therefore be given the top funding of £4,000. The Scouts are planning on using the money to update their camping equipment, in particular; replacing and extending tents and marquees and purchasing gas stoves, spare sleeping bags, pots, pans and cutlery. Nick Nelson, group chair, commented: “We are absolutely delighted that we have been awarded this grant from Tesco and are very thankful to all of our supporters for voting for us. This will make a real difference to the group, giving us the ability to get more young people and their adult volunteers under canvas to challenge themselves.”
January/February vote
Three new projects have now been chosen for in-store voting
and they are all hoping to collect as many tokens as possible in order to receive the highest amount of prize money: Bradley Stoke United FC are looking for funding to provide match day and training goals, flags, respect barriers and balls. They would also like to develop the training of the volunteer coaches. As the club is run entirely by volunteers, they rely on funding and donations to keep their current coaches training up to date and to train new coaches. They are currently in desperate need of new coaches for all of their teams and those coaches will need to be trained to receive FA status. This training involves attending a course which provides an introduction to the Football Association and demonstrates how to deliver safe and enjoyable training sessions for young players. Furthermore, the current coaches need to keep their training up to date to develop their skills and attend regular sessions on First Aid and Safeguarding. Talking to Phil, who submitted the Football Club’s application, he stated: “We may only be a small club with 170 players across all the age ranges, but we are one of the longest serving clubs in the region and are run entirely by volunteers. In order to keep going, we need to recruit more players as well as
more coaches. Depending on the amount of funding that we receive, our priority is to train some new coaches and buy some match day goals as are existing ones are currently being held together with duck tape!” The Olympus Academy Trust (OAT) will use the money for their Concorde Learning Intervention Centre (CLIC). They would like to create a high quality space for students who struggle to learn effectively in a standard classroom environment. This would be achieved through transforming a disused building into a new facility to provide students from Bradley Stoke, Abbeywood and Patchway Community Schools an alternative to exclusion. This would help students who are currently disengaged from education to build confidence in themselves as learners and develop the skills and attitudes they need to make a positive contribution in the community. Katie Stobbart, OAT marketing lead, said: “The CLIC is such a worthy cause – it gives kids a second chance and gets them back into school. We already have a building in the grounds of Patchway Community School that has been refurbished to meet basic needs but there is still work to be done. With any money that we receive, we would like to hire a garden landscape company
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