On Friday 23rd September 2022, local British Gas Smart Energy Experts from across Sussex and Kent undertook a 13.2 mile walk across a stretch of the South Downs to raise money towards the running costs of our various programmes.
James Prior, a British Gas Smart Energy Expert and father of Jenson and Leylan who are both supported by the group, decided that he and his colleagues would attempt the walk to raise much needed funds.
On the day of the event, the group of British Gas Smart Energy Experts in East Sussex all met to do the sponsor walk after they had chosen our charity to help.
They met at the Seven Sisters car park in the morning and started the walk on a very wet and windy day.
They stopped half way to meet some extra staff who were unable to do the whole walk due to health issues, proceeded to have lunch and then took the same walk back.
The team raised £610 (inc gift aid) and their employer (Centrica) match-funded their net efforts with a £610 donation.
Following on from their efforts the following year, the team did not manage to do a sponsored event.
Instead, they put several charities forward for a vote on who should receive the team’s end of year donation.
James put our charity into the vote and as it was so personal to him, the team chose us again. This resulted in a donation of £1000, which Centrica then matched again, leaving the total raised for us by the engineers over the two year period at £3220. The money will be spent on the general running of our programmes.
A big “thank you” goes to James Prior and his team at British Gas for raising such a large sum (£3,220) and thank you to Centrica for their match-funding.