Science company helps charity’s county-wide harvest festival helping Derbyshire’s hardest hit amid soaring demand

Added by Love Business East Midlands | 19 November 2024

UPDATED: 19 November 2024

Derbyshire science company Lubrizol has helped a local charity’s first corporate-backed harvest festival helping provide much-needed supplies to those hit hardest by the cost of living crisis.

The Padley@YMCA Derbyshire, a merger of YMCA Derbyshire and The Padley Group, this year appealed to businesses to collect and sort thousands of food, clothing and toiletry donations to its giant Harvest Festival campaign, helping those most in need.

One of the companies which sent in a team of volunteers to spend a day collecting and sorting donations was Lubrizol, whose UK Technical Centre is based at Hazelwood near Duffield. Lubrizol employees also contributed to the Harvest appeal by collecting donations from staff.

Kerry Collyer, marketing manager for Padley@YMCA Derbyshire, explained that the charity had appealed for corporate help this year for the first time to help collect and manage the large number of donations to its Harvest Festival campaign.

In the past, the charity has employed a small workforce for ten weeks to manage the huge operation, but this year business support has enabled it to save thousands of pounds so that vital cash can be spent where it is most needed.

She said:

“Churches and schools from across Derby and Derbyshire have donated to us for our Harvest festival. This year we invited corporate teams to do collecting days. They’ve been helping us by going out in the van, collecting donations and then sorting them into food, toiletries and clothing.”

The newly merged Padley@YMCA Derbyshire brings together the services of its predecessors which include providing food parcels as well as hot meals.

Kerry said:

“Since the cost of living crisis, demand has increased three-fold. Before, we were distributing between 50 and 80 parcels a month. With rising energy prices that’s gone up to 250.

"Without the donations to our Harvest Festival, we wouldn’t have enough food coming in. This is the first year we’ve invited businesses to help us collect food and it’s saved us thousands of pounds.

“We’re really grateful to companies like Lubrizol. The Harvest Festival is a massive undertaking. We had hundreds of thousands of donations. Without their help, we just couldn’t have collected it all – they’ve saved us a lot of money too.”

Jo Rock, from Lubrizol, who took part in the volunteering day, said:

“Giving back to the local community is very important to us at Lubrizol and we were glad to lend a hand with the brilliant Harvest Festival initiative. It was humbling to see the sheer volume of donations and we are happy to have played our part not only in making donations ourselves but by getting much-needed food, toiletries and clothing to those who need it most.”

 

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