Our 8 telephone befrienders become home-visiting volunteers with thanks to Tesco’s community grant scheme.
In February, we welcomed 8 new volunteers to Home-Start Banbury, Bicester & Chipping Norton as telephone befrienders. We are delighted that all 8 chose to complete some extra training with us, comprising of 5 sessions in May and June, to become fully-trained home-visiting volunteers. A £1,000 donation from Tesco’s Bags of Help community grant scheme allowed this extra training programme to run.
Bags of Help is run in partnership with community charity Groundwork, and sees grants awarded to thousands of local community projects every year. Since launching in 2015, Bags of Help has provided more than £68million to almost 30,000 local community projects across England.
Claire de Silva, Tesco’s Head of Community, said: “In what has been an extremely tough year, we’ve been able to make additional grants available to charities and community groups providing support for mental health and we’re looking forward to seeing the difference these projects make. Our community grant scheme contributes funds to community projects up and down the country and whilst our customers have not been able to vote in this round, we’ve been delighted by the number of colleagues who have come together to choose projects in their local areas.”