D E Ford is fortunate to employ a group of people who not only care about looking after our clients’ needs in our day to day business activities.  Like a good number of organisations today, our people are also passionate about the community and they’re willing to “go the extra mile” to give something back to assist the lives of those less fortunate than they are. D E Ford’s efforts gathered momentum in 2010 and picked up further pace in 2011, with their participation in both the Jane Tomlinson Run For All, York 10k on 31st July and the Jane Tomlinson Walk For All 14 mile walk in the Yorkshire Dales on 14th August.

At the heart of the effort was Joanne Noble, our ‘organiser’. In May 2010 Jo’s Aunt lost her battle with breast cancer. Jo picked up on the incredible Jane Tomlinson story, mentioned it to her immediate colleagues and participation in the York 10k 2010 followed. As Jo says, “On the Monday morning following the event, despite the aches and pains, everyone said they would be keen to take part again the next year. It was pretty much there and then that we decided that D E Ford would participate in an annual fund raising event. We’d had fun and we’d also seen the team-building benefits of getting together out of work for the good of worthy causes”.

So it was that in January 2011  we opened up to everyone working at Fords for suggestions as to what we should do in 2011. The conclusion was that we’d do two events, the “York 10k” and the “Walk The Dales”. Both were once again Jane Tomlinson events, though of course a key feature is that participants can nominate charities of their choosing as beneficiaries from sponsorships gained. Having supported Sue Ryder in 2010, we decided to split our donations two ways this year. Many of our people are parents and therefore we chose Acorns Children’s Hospice and Caudwell Children, both of whose work we greatly admire. What have now become “the usual” activities took place at our designated fundraising day in May; bric-a-brac, cakes & buns, super-hero quiz etc saw us set the ball rolling by raising £295.20 “in-house”.

Despite the inevitable stiffness of limbs, blisters and tired bodies we’re pleased to say we counted all our runners and walkers out, and counted them all back in again at the finish to both events. We’re extremely proud that donations of circa £4500 in 2010 were exceeded in 2011 by some 33%, as once again the generosity of clients, business partners, relatives and friends made the difference and we marginally exceeded £6000 in total, once Gift Aid was added where eligible.

We’re pleased to show a few pictures from the days here and we’d like to record special thanks to all our sponsors. Now Joanne, about 2012…