Supermarket gives back to the community
Market Rasen Rotary Club members were visited by the town’s Tesco store Community Leader to describe more about the good causes it supports – including an upcoming static cycle ride for charity.
Rotarians welcomed Amanda Gwyther who explained her role is to be the link between the community and Tesco.
She has a budget to invest in projects and tends to be best used to give raffle prizes of Tesco goods to requesting organisations. The charity book exchange in the store raised £2,800 last year, which swelled Mandy’s spending power.
The Tesco fund supports activities, charities, not for profit organisations such as the Baby Bank, food banks in Caistor and Rasen, and Tesco supports school breakfast clubs and the Sure Start campaign. They also encourage children to get involved in cooking.
Mandy explained she can use 17 hours of her working week for charitable purposes and so is able to help organisations such as Rotary when they have a shortage of person power for a project.
As well as allocating space for Christmas collections in December, Mandy controls the allocation of requests for collections at the store all through the year.
All food that is at its sell by date, but otherwise not perishable, is passed to Fair Share if Fair Share collect. This is then distributed by Fair Share to food banks. This amounts to 600kg /month. It includes all yellow stickered food not sold by the end of a day.
The Old Station Group in Market Rasen is collecting old flowers, which they dry to make organic confetti, which is beneficial in church yards. Mandy will collect old flowers and move them to the group for processing.
Finally, the Blue Token scheme raises three prizes of £1,500, £1000, and £500 every three months and the money is awarded to local projects, who have applied to be one of the recipients at the outset. These must be for the wider education of children.
Any organisation in the local area serviced by Market Rasen Tesco can receive support from Tesco if they write in and apply. Written letters are preferred, rather than electronic mail, but Caistor area can benefit as well as Rasen.
On May 22, Mandy said that Tesco in Market Rasen is, along with all Tesco stores in the area, hosting a sponsored static cycle ride from John o’Groats to Land’s End to raise money for Sheffield Children’s Hospital (which serves the needs of our local area).