AGM Update, Mental Health sessions & £25,000 for Longlevens RDA Shop
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Published 29 Apr 2022 in Phil's blog
I spent Wednesday and Thursday this week with the Executive team and selected members from across the Society’s senior management on a two-day working session focussed on delivering our membership strategy. The Board has set a goal to become a ‘member first’ organisation where the majority of our trade is with our members and where more of our members use more of our products and services. The team looked at the progress we had made, how we could do more to deliver these ambitions and what additional activity or investment may be needed.
I know that many of you have already fed back your thoughts on this and how we can help you to support our collective objectives. Over the next couple of weeks, we will publish and share more of the outputs from this session and I would love to hear your thoughts and ideas on how we can succeed in meeting the aims of our Board and ultimately improving our membership proposition.
Energy Saving Awareness – tackling increasing energy costs Society wide
Energy reduction continues to be a priority across our Trading sites, helping to tackle increasing energy costs. Many thanks in particular to all of our Food Stores for their responses to our Food Retail energy saving survey during the Easter week. These responses have provided us with some really useful insight and opportunities to work with our sites to save energy over the coming weeks and months. As a reminder, we can all play our part in helping to save energy, and in turn, reduce our energy costs and help protect our planet for future generations. Simple actions we can all take will make a big difference, such as switching lights off when not in use, only boiling as much water as is needed in a kettle, and not leaving appliances charging or on standby when not needed.
Society AGM – win a dream trip to New York & Your Co-op Conversations Week
As the Society AGM moves ever closer, we wrote to our members earlier this week with an updated itinerary and a slight change to the timings of the day, now between 9:45am-2.30pm.
Taking place for the first time physically since 2019 as a hybrid physical/online event, we will be supported by a number of special guests on the day, so I encourage you all to join in either at the venue or online.
Farmer and Rural TV presenter, Adam Henson, who you may recognise as one of our ‘Food Glorious Food’ panel judges will be a guest speaker as well as local retailer and MBE recipient Rosie Ginday (AKA Miss Macaroon).
That’s not all, during the day there will be a range of activities from a Sustainability Clothes Swap Shop to even test driving an Electric Vehicle. This will part of our reflection on the Society’s performance and how together we have made a difference to our many communities over the past year.
Plus, if any member attends in-person at the Motorcycle Museum, they will be in with the chance of winning a dream trip to New York with Co-op Holidays!
Click here to book on and find out more.
Showcasing our Society Values in Action again, this week we held our dedicated Your Co-op Conversations week. From learning basic first aid for children to meeting two of our local suppliers who are making a difference, there was some fantastic member participation and questions during each session. These events provide a reminder for members to understand what our Society stands for and a chance for us to showcase some of the incredible things we do behind the scenes across our trading areas. A thank you to all of the presenters, partners and colleagues who made them possible.
Mental Health Champions – Drop in sessions
In addition to GroceryAid and the EveryMind App we have now introduced the Mental Health Champion sessions as another avenue of support for our colleagues. These colleagues as you will see in the video here are really passionate about mental health and are here to chat with any colleague that might just need someone to listen.
They provide peer support, raise awareness around the importance of mental health, contribute to the goal of reducing stigma surrounding mental health and signpost colleagues who may need further support. However, I would like to point out, that our champions are not therapists nor are they experts in mental health but will helpfully be able to signpost to people that are.
To everyone in the video and others supporting, a big thank you for putting yourselves forward and for being there for our colleagues. I am sure this will make a huge difference to those who reach out. For more information on the sessions click here.
£25,000 raised in our Longlevens charity shop for Riding for the Disabled (RDA)
Our charity and community partners really do help showcase our Values in Action, so it was great to hear that our Longlevens Riding for the Disabled (RDA) shop based in Gloucestershire has raised £25,000 in its first 7 months of operation.
Having visited the shop and the charity partner earlier this year, the shop is really unique providing both a community space and a charity shop all in one place. Bringing together the local community, RDA provides dedicated therapy to over 84 children and adults, whose ages range from 2 to 70.
The amount raised will now help keep 2 horses for the year and continue to provide an opportunity for social activities, competitions, and National holidays for many who would be restricted otherwise. A brilliant partner who makes a real difference to the community, I’d like to say a massive well done to everyone involved in making it happen.
9,300 deliveries during the Easter school holidays HAF programme
It was great to hear that even more meals were delivered to families over the Easter school holidays as part of the holiday activities and food programme (HAF). Partnering with 8 councils including new customers across Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire, the initiative sees our Food teams provide recipes, ingredients and meals direct to families in need during each school holiday period.
This follows on from our deliveries during Christmas, which have now increased to 9,300 over the Easter holidays. I would like to give a big thank you to all the colleagues who have been involved in making this project a success, in particular Knighton Food Store Manager, Peter Leach and chef Judy Cheyne from Bourton.
To read more click here.
Fantastic feedback from one of the families
Christine Sumner from Shrewsbury Sutton Food celebrates 40 years of service
Finally, today, I visited Christine Sumner from Shrewsbury Sutton Food who celebrates an incredible 40 years of service with us. Catching up with Christine was a pleasure and I thanked her for all the years of service since being with us. Living just around the corner from the store for 28 years, Christine is now a proud grandmother and also has a sibling (Julie) who retired last year. Between them, they have 78 years of service.
Her favourite part of the job is meeting the customers and helping some of the elderly who visit daily. Another fun fact to share is that Sir Tony Blair’s father used to be a regular local customer at the store, Christine would help him do his shopping and, on some occasions, take his shopping home, she even used to help pick Tony’s birthday card. Fantastic to hear!
Christine is next to me and her sister Julie is next to her peering through the 0! Congratulations
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