It’s hard to believe a year has passed since we ran our Community Contribution initiative! To celebrate Bandvulc’s 50th anniversary we awarded £250 to a number of local causes and organisations and, one year later, we’ve been catching up with the recipients to learn how the contribution has been used.
We were pleased to support the amazing work The Emotional Logic Centre carry out to teach practical, innovative, lifelong learning skills to help reduce stress, increase resilience and promote adaptability. Trevor Griffiths comments; “We have welcomed a new member to our team who has been trained in Emotional Logic with your Award and has attended local courses and events since then. She also spends time in the office making up packs of materials which are being sent widely to many schools in the UK especially in Devon and Plymouth, as well as abroad to community development projects.”
Trevor added; “Your award has given us a significant uplift in the way we can reach out to help people adapt and respond constructively to setbacks and disappointments, gaining the inner strength to build better relationships. Emotional Logic will be needed more than ever in the changing world we share.”
We also were delighted to hear from Laura Hughes at Moorvision, a charity which offers information, advice, support, activities and shared experiences for families, children and parents / carers with vision impairment in Devon (including Plymouth and Torbay) and Cornwall.
“We were very grateful for Bandvulc’s support last year and our charity has continued to weather all the ups and downs of the pandemic and all it brings. Even now we have to be careful as a number of the children we support are vulnerable of course. We utilised Bandvulc’s contribution to fund a canoeing trip for our youngsters!” comments Laura. “The trip was such a success that, in addition to all of our other activities, we ran another similar activity this year where we took a party of blind and partially sighted youngsters to Dynamic Dartington for a day of outdoor activities including climbing, zip wiring, and abseiling. Our other good news is that we are now covering the whole of Cornwall as well as Devon in our support offer”.
We also heard from the Ivybridge Rotary Club who added the £250 into their charity account which was shared among 5 different local charities that benefit young people. As a group the Rotary Club also raised £5,000.00 for the Ukraine recently.
One of Bandvulc’s core values is sustainability and reducing our impact on the environment, a vision shared with the YEM (Yealm to Moor) project which aims to link fragmented habitats, such as wetlands, woodlands and species rich grassland, along the River Yealm from coastal estuary to moorland source, to create a continuous in-river and riparian wildlife corridor. The project will do this through restoring existing habitats currently in poor ecological condition, creating new habitats where possible, improving connectivity in-river by easing barriers for migratory fish and increasing biodiversity along the course of the River Yealm, which is near to our plant in Ivybridge.
Julia Bertram kindly updated us on the project’s progress since last year; “Bandvulc’s support at this key stage has enabled the YEM project to evolve from being a desktop study to start being delivered with tangible impact on the ground. Your grant has helped pay for water quality testing kits for the volunteers and the training for three leaders to coordinate the volunteer groups in water and terrestrial monitoring and has acted as a seed fund to allow YEM to start the work and demonstrate to other funders the importance and need for the project, providing tangible, measurable outcomes from the start by testing at the pilot sites, we can’t thank Bandvulc enough for the £250 award.”
Bandvulc has been delighted to support the local community and it’s been really interesting to find out about the different charities and groups from our local area and follow up with their recent progress. For details of other organisations Bandvulc have supported as part of our project you can revisit our article from 2021 here.