Weathering The Storms For FareShare

16 weeks ago, a group of TEP staff began training for a sponsored walk. Although ‘a walk’ is a bit of an understatement. Our challenge was to cover a combined distance of 600 miles in the same weekend, the equivalent of walking between each of our offices. Each of our staff members set themselves the target of walking 40,000 steps (just shy of a marathon). Even on a normal weekend, this would require a significant amount of effort. But last weekend, we had storms Dudley, Eunice and Franklin to contend with as well. However, this didn’t deter our intrepid ramblers, instead, it made them more determined. Like your Aunty always said, “There’s no such thing as bad weather, only bad clothes.”

As we mentioned, it was a sponsored walk. So, not only were our ramblers training for their epic quest, but they were raising money too, which included lunchtime quizzes and our famous Christmas raffle. The charity we were raising money for was FareShare, a charity making sure no good food goes to waste. FareShare takes good quality surplus food from right across the food industry and delivers it to more than 10,500 frontline charities and community groups. This includes school breakfast clubs, older people’s lunch clubs, homeless shelters, and community cafes. Every week they provide enough food to create almost a million meals for vulnerable people.

To help support FareShare in their goals, TEP set our staff the fundraising target of £2,500, which they pledged to match fund if we managed to reach. With the target and date set, all there was left to do was walk.

On the weekend of the 19 ^th and 20 ^th February 2022, 30 TEP staff (plus some cajoled family and friends) set off. They battled the wind, rain, sleet, mud and even fallen trees, all to reach that finish line. And they did it with as much style and grace they could muster considering the conditions. Our staff could be found wandering paths all over the UK including Tyne and Wear, Merseyside, Cheshire, Leicestershire, Wales, London, Cornwall, the Cairngorms, the Peak District and even in Poland and on Lanzarote. And altogether they managed to walk a combined distance of 735 miles, which is over 1.4 million steps.

Well done to our fantastic ramblers, who donated their time and energy to help raise money and awareness for this worthy cause. Without you, it wouldn’t have been possible!

We would also like to say a special thank you to all the contacts and companies that very generously supported us. This includes Airedale Forestry, CampbellReith, Stantec, USP Creative, VPS, Tobemore, LEAD Careers, Kinley Group (Excel Edge) and Softcat.

By enlisting the help of the entire company and our very generous contacts, including many kind individuals, we managed to raise an incredible £6,225. That means FareShare will be able to provide over 24,900 meals for those most vulnerable in our communities.

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