Celebrating our Co-op Difference

Co-op Difference event

On Tuesday evening I was really proud to speak at our Co-op Difference event held at Wolverhampton racecourse which was attended by over 200 people. We had a great turn out from our community partners, some of whom I knew already but there were also many new faces in the audience. I was fortunate enough to see some of them in action last month and this event for me really brought together all that is best about Midcounties and our community work.

To help our partners we held sessions on active members and promoting stories in the local press before the start of the evening event. Over dinner, our Regional Community ambassadors then introduced some of our chosen charity partners before we presented grants and colleague awards. To name but a few, we had really inspiring presentations from, Riding For the Disabled, the homeless support charity, Aspire and MASE (Monthly Alzheimer’s Support Evenings) and presented grants to three more charities – Ablewell Advice in Walsall, Dudley Gymnastics and the Green Park School Voluntary Committee, in Wolverhampton.

Lee Brown (above left with Mike Pickering, CSR Manager), the manager of our Kingswinford Food store, then gave a really moving testimony about his team’s volunteering and fundraising with White House Cancer Support following one of his colleagues very sadly passing away. We finished the evening with our colleague awards – if you have not done so already click here to find out the winners. Throughout the evening we publicised the hashtag #coopdifference and as a result, had a positive engagement on social media. Putting on an event like this takes a huge amount of work and I would personally like to thank, Mike Pickering, Barbara Dunne, Louise Brown, Karen McNeil, Marnie Richards, Rebekah Brain and Tarra Simmons for making it such a success. To see pictures from the event click here.

Create and Cook roadshow/ Food Glorious Food

This week the Create and Cook Competition went on the road to promote the newest addition to our county list - Shropshire. A well-known local chef called Adam Purnell aka Shropshire Lad shared some of his great ideas for cooking using local and seasonal ingredients serving up KFC and KFP - Kentucky Fried Cauliflower and Kentucky Fried Partridge! Adam is much in demand and on Tuesday evening he appeared on a new Channel 4 and Netflix show called Crazy Delicious, another food competition.

We sponsor Create and Cook because it is a fun project for schools focusing on local food. It is run by Min Raisman who previously worked on Radio 4 and helped run the prestigious BBC Food and Farming Awards. The competition is open to aspiring 12-14-year old chefs (school years 8 and 9) in secondary schools in, Oxfordshire, Gloucestershire and Shropshire.

We have also been busy promoting our other food competition, Food Glorious Food, as entries must be in by the end of the month. So please, if you know of a food producer in the Cotswolds who would benefit from a £10k investment in their business, mentoring and shelf space in our stores please encourage them to enter Food Glorious Food at this link.

Dr Hilary Jones

I’m delighted to say that we have extended our relationship with Dr Hilary Jones to support our digital health and wellbeing business for another year. In the first year, Dr Hilary added valuable brand authority and trust to our cooppharmacy.coop website. He wrote and recorded content to help educate users on key conditions which has helped to promote sales. Many will remember Dr Hilary attending the AGM and his involvement in our 2018 Men’s Health campaign which resulted in us being shortlisted for a prestigious national pharmacy award.

Going forward we have, subject to contract, agreed that Dr Hilary will provide monthly support for key health and wellbeing initiatives. These could be written or filmed content for our website or maybe wider media pieces. We also plan to make him available for meetings and panel sessions. Dr Hilary is very flexible, supportive of our values and principles and we look forward to another successful year in partnership.

Fight Inequality Campaign

Co-operatives UK is supporting Fight Inequality Alliance’s annual global campaign which is taking place this week. The campaign highlights social inequality and puts forward solutions for creating a more equal society. As business leaders leave Davos having attended the World Economic Forum it’s good to know Co-operatives UK is shining a spotlight on the ordinary people who are coming together to create solutions in their local communities. You can find out more by clicking here.

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