Colleagues at Coastline Housing have presented £20,000 to Cornwall Blood Bikes to help the local charity in its lifesaving work.
The money is the result of a year’s worth of fundraising by colleagues at the Cornish housing charity and this year they raised a record amount.
CEO Allister Young, who was proud to help hand over the cheque, said: “Coastline colleagues clearly felt very passionately about Cornwall Blood Bikes to raise such a fantastic amount. Any of us living in or visiting Cornwall never know when we might need the services of this fantastic charity and its hard-working volunteers so we’ve been proud to fundraise for them across the past 12 months.”
Colleagues at Coastline raised the funds thanks to a number of events including their big annual marathon challenge in September where colleagues between them clocked up just over 3,000 miles in one day and raised £5,128. Participants walked, ran and cycled the miles – and one small group of colleagues even did a special motorbike ride to add some miles to the total, in tribute to Cornwall Blood Bikes and the many miles volunteers cover each year.
Across the year, staff at Coastline also held events such as BBQs, a quiz night, raffle, big breakfasts and a VE day celebration.
Cornwall Blood Bikes is a volunteer-run charity providing a free, "out of hours" courier service for the NHS, transporting blood, plasma, urgent samples, medication, and donor breast milk between hospitals, hospices, and care homes. They operate weekday nights (5pm–7am) and 24 hours on weekends/bank holidays to save the NHS money on courier fees.
Jayne Penlerick, Chair of Cornwall Blood Bikes, said: “We are just blown away by this £20,000 donation. We are all volunteers and Cornwall Blood Bikes gets busier each year. Last year the team carried out around 7,800 jobs and rode a total of around 244,000 miles doing so. We also celebrated our 10th anniversary. We wouldn’t be able to do any of this without people like the team at Coastline Housing who fundraise so hard for us. It means so much to be able to use this money to keep these bikes on the road for the people of Cornwall.”
Assistant Director of Finance at Coastline Zoe Field, who organised the Coastline charity marathon challenge, adds: “Every year I think to myself that we won’t beat our previous total in terms of miles and money – but then we seem to manage it. I’m so proud of the way colleagues get involved and really push themselves to make a difference and we know this money will make a real difference to Cornwall Blood Bikes.”