Co-op Fortnight Finishes - Round-Up

Co-op Fortnight finishes this weekend. So here is a round up of what has been happening this week together with a look ahead to International Day of Co-operatives tomorrow.

Midcounties Community Concert

As you know we have been celebrating Co-op Fortnight, as a Society we hosted the second ‘Crazy Composers’ concert, which was held in Walsall and was attended by 360 local children! The Crazy Composers Concert was followed by our ‘Midcounties Community Concert’ which was very well attended and I’ve heard was a great success!

The Crazy Composers concert gave students from nine local primary schools across Walsall the opportunity to discover the delights of classical music and also help them to develop skills in composing, singing and performing.

In the evening, the Community Concert was attended by over 200 people who had a unique opportunity to play with ‘The English Concert Orchestra’, Europe’s leading Baroque Orchestra, and International Concert Organ and Pianist, Jean Martyn from ITV’s - Britain’s Got Talent!

I would like to say a huge well done to Marnie Richards and her fantastic team for organising the concerts, which perfectly fit our Society’s commitment to promote social cohesion and inclusion.

Ecobricks Turkey Shed & Eco-Schools Flag Award

On Wednesday we had the launch and unveiling of our Ecobricks Turkey House at Fairytale Farm in Chipping Norton – a new eco-friendly home for Turkeys!

As you know the Ecobricks are made entirely from a plastic bottle being tightly packed and compressed with unrecyclable plastic, that would otherwise end up in landfill or the ocean.

To make sure this was a launch to remember, we invited the students of Great Rollright Church of England Primary School, who donated a massive 357 Ecobricks to the Turkey Shed build project. The school children assisted in cutting the ribbon during the unveiling and they also helped to carry the Turkeys into their newly built house.

 

I’ve heard that the sheds were made from over 1,000 Ecobricks, which were donated by local schools and members – I think this is a brilliant achievement! It certainly goes to show that people are willing to make a difference in their community, if you give them an opportunity to do so.

The Turkeys were very happy and soon settled into their new home!

If you would like to see the Turkey’s in their new home, Fairytale Farm is offering all colleagues & their families a 15% discount on entry. Just show your colleague card upon entry to receive the discount.

Whilst we’re on the subject of schools and environmental awareness, I am thrilled to announce that last week, Stonehouse Nursery within the Childcare Group, was awarded the coveted Eco-Schools Green Flag. It is an international recognised award for excellence in environmental action and learning. Stone Nursery had to demonstrate the work of their ‘Eco-Committee’, made up of Colleagues and children to an Eco Assessor.

The Eco-Schools programme is an initiative created for schools and nurseries to embark on a meaningful path towards improving the environment in both the setting and the local community, while at the same time having a life-long positive impact on the lives of young people and their families.

The Eco-Schools programme consists of three structural elements – The Seven Step Framework, the Eco-Schools Topics and assessment for the international Green Flag award. I am also very happy as this is the 5^th Co-op Nursery to have been awarded the top accolade from Keep Britain Tidy. Well done to everyone in involved!

Create & Cook 2019 Winners

Last Friday the winners were announced at the grand finale of our Create & Cook Competition. Sponsored in the Cotswolds by the Best of Our Counties range, young cooks from schools across Gloucestershire and Oxfordshire were challenged to create menus using locally-produced ingredients including at least one item from the Best of our Counties range.

 

Leon Woolley and Deaken Bhavnani, both 13 years old, from Cirencester Deer Park School were crowned the overall winners. Their winning recipes were a mouth-watering wild garlic and hazelnut pesto with goats' cheese and mushroom ravioli, followed by a triple chocolate brownie with Chantilly cream, raspberry coulis and hazelnuts – I don’t know about you but that really does sound delicious!

 

They win £300 and the coveted Midcounties Create and Cook trophy!

We will also be promoting their recipes widely in the press and online, so do look out for them.

Visitors from Japan

Ahead of International Day of Co-operatives on 6 July a group of representatives from the Japanese Consumers' Co-operative Union (JCCU) were welcomed by Pete Westall and his team, to visit our Head Office on Wednesday.

The JCCU is the largest consumers' organisation in Japan. It has 29 million members and represents 320 consumer co-ops with total gross sales of about 3.5 trillion Yen or about £26 billion.

The visitors were shown round our office and were then told about our trading activities, our approach to running a successful co-operative across a diverse range of business groups and how we make our values come to life. They also visited our Leamington Spa Nursery and our Bourton-on-the-Water Food Store.

It is important for us as a Co-operative movement to share our knowledge, expertise and exchanging ideas internationally, as well as locally, as it enables us to have a far-reaching impact and understanding about other consumer co-operatives across the world.

International Day of Co-operatives

 

Tomorrow (Saturday 6 July) is the International Day of Co-operatives when we will be joining with co-operatives from all over the world to celebrate everything that makes Co-operatives great places to work #CoopsDay

The theme for this year is COOPS 4 DECENT WORK. This has been chosen to support the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goal ‘Inclusive development and decent work’.

This week we have been focussing on our Modern Slavery campaign and tomorrow we’ll be tweeting about different co-operatives from Colombia to Uganda.

I encourage you to please follow us on Twitter to see some amazing examples of co-operation from around the world @midcountiescoop

Guest Bloggers

I will be away for the next two weeks on my holidays with my family. So, I’ve asked two new guest bloggers to take my place each Friday.

Sally Bonnar, Chief Operating Officer, Childcare will blog next week and Mike Pickering, our Co-operative Social Responsibility Manager, the week after.

If you have enjoyed reading my blog this week, then why not let me know your thoughts? Just sign in and comment below.