Tesco stores across Northern Ireland have helped to raise over £33,000 for Marie Curie, one of the UK’s leading end of life charities.
Tesco Ballymena managed to contribute over £1.2k in donations in just two days.
The money was raised by recent volunteer collections at Tesco stores across Northern Ireland.
Tesco NI worked with Marie Curie to stage collections in March as part of Marie Curie’s Great Daffodil Appeal, which is a public collection campaign that happens annually in March.
Ronny McFall, Tesco Superstore Ballymena Community Champion, said:
“The pandemic has changed the dynamics of fundraising in our store. Bag packing use to be a popular why to fundraise but due to social distancing guidance we had decided not to start this type of fundraising as yet.
“Bucket collections are taking place with a few restrictions, and charities can contact myself to find out more about this.
“Four-figure amounts of cash would have been collected before COVID, but now it is more often three -figure sums. Customers are using contactless means to pay more now (a number of charities are looking at ways to receive donations this way in store).
“The Daffodil Day Collection raising £1,200 is fantastic - back to four-figures again!”
Alison Hanna, Marie Curie local fundraising Co-ordinator for Ballymena commented:
“We are over the moon with the amount raised as we know people are watching their pennies at the moment. The management team, colleagues, and of course Ronny, looks after us very well when in collecting each year.”
Conor O'Kane, Senior Partnership Manager (NI & Scotland), at Marie Curie is very grateful for Tesco’s contribution:
“Marie Curie was absolutely delighted that Tesco NI again welcomed our volunteer collectors into stores across Northern Ireland in support of our annual Great Daffodil Appeal. Thanks to the immense generosity of customers and staff a phenomenal amount of money was raised to support end of life care for people across the whole of Northern Ireland.”
Tesco regularly supports Cancer Research UK, British Heart Foundation, Diabetes UK, Trussell Trust and FareShare through food donations and collections, in-store donations, charitable events, Race for Life participation, sponsorship, and matching customer contributions and donations.