This week (24-30 July) Southern Co-op has been running a Charity Awareness Week – and began by donating £98,000 to its charity partners.
The donation came from Southern’s Love Your Neighbourhood scheme. Funded by the 5p single-use carrier bag levy, the scheme is a community engagement programme addressing four key social themes, chosen through a survey of over 4,000 members and colleagues, promoting: ‘Greener Neighbourhoods’, ‘Healthier Neighbourhoods’, ‘Safer Neighbourhoods’, and ‘More Inclusive Neighbourhoods’.
“We have set up a Charity Awareness Week to highlight the importance of helping our local communities,” said Gemma Lacey, director of sustainability and communications.
“We also thought it would be great to challenge our colleagues to raise more money for their charity partners and they have a great track record – throughout last year, over £262, 000 was raised for good causes by Southern Co-op colleagues, a remarkable achievement!”
Throughout the week, the organisation held coffee mornings, raffles and other events, encouraged people to visit their local Southern Co-op branch to see how they can help raise money for local causes, and challenged colleagues in food stores and funeral homes to raise as much money as possible for their associated charity partner.
The scheme was originally set up by Southern in 2016 to empower each store, funeral home and office to support the issues that matter most to their members and neighbourhoods. In its first year, £701,514 was invested in local communities from the scheme.
