Our regular readers will know that Bolton MRT had been shortlisted for the Lloyds Bank Community Fund 2014 in the north-Bolton / Blackburn area.
By encouraging the public to vote, Bolton Mountain Rescue Team had a chance to be awarded a grant of up to £3,000.00 from Lloyds Bank to enable it to continue doing good work in the community.
The team was very kindly nominated for this award by Lloyds Bank employee Jane Crook, whom we rescued way back in August 1999, following a fall from her mountain bike in Lever Park, Rivington.
The Lloyds Bank Community Fund was set up to help local people across England, Wales, and Northern Ireland, the Channel Islands and Isle of Man to have a positive impact at the heart of their community by giving grants to up to 1,400 local good causes in 350 communities.
There were four good causes shortlisted in each community and Lloyds Bank invited everyone to vote for the causes they’d most like to support.
As a result of Jane’s nomination along with nominations from others, the Lloyds Community Fund shortlisted ourselves and three other local charities within the Blackburn/Bolton community area.
Members of the public could vote for their preferred community group on-line, by SMS or Twitter, or in a branch of Lloyds bank up to yesterday evening, Friday 10th October 2014.
The local good cause that received most votes in each community would receive an award of £3,000.00 with the other groups receiving £2,000.00 £1,000.00 or £500.00 depending on the votes received.
On Tuesday 4th November 2014 we were very pleased to announce that on Monday afternoon 3rd November 2014, our Team Leader Garry Rhodes MBE received from Lloyds Bank the fantastic news via an email that we had come ‘second’ in the nominations, and were due to receive a huge £2,000.00 donation.
Yesterday, Wednesday 12th November, our Team Leader Garry Rhodes MBE received the latest email from Lloyds Bank ;
“Hi Garry Rhodes.
Congratulations! Your Lloyds Bank Community Fund award cheque is in the post. It is clearly marked as Community Fund Award so please keep an eye out for it.
Nearly 1.5 million votes were cast during the Community Fund public vote for the 1,400 community groups across England, Wales, the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man.
We are delighted to be able to support so many local good causes and that your group is benefiting from this year’s Community Fund.
We hope you are very proud of your achievement!
We are dedicated to supporting the communities where we live and work and we hope this award will make an important contribution to the very valuable work your group delivers.
We will also send you a certificate which should be with you shortly.
Congratulations once again,
The Lloyds Bank Community Fund Team.”
As promised in the above communication, today our Team Leader Garry Rhodes MBE received in the post a wonderfully kind £2,000.00 donation from Lloyds Bank plc.
This is obviously fantastic news for the team, and of course for the other charities which have greatly benefitted from the kind support of Lloyds Bank Community Fund.
We would like to take this opportunity to once again thank Lloyds Bank employee Jane Crook for nominating us in the first instance.
We will now be contacting Jane Crook to invite her to visit us if she so wishes, so we can all thank her in person for nominating us for this award.
We would like to take this opportunity once again to thank all our kind supporters who added their vote for Bolton Mountain Rescue Team.
We would also like to say a big thank you to colleague Mountain Rescue Teams, Search and Rescue Teams and a great many individuals who have regularly re-tweeted our updates on this vote.
Please also see website ‘News’ report dated Monday 29th September 2014, Monday 6th, Wednesday 8th, Saturday 11th October and Tuesday 4th November 2014.
