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Christmas cheer
Same-day delivery specialist CitySprint is providing two vans to support Crisis at Christmas the charity dedicated to ending homelessness. The vans will be used to collect and deliver donated goods from around the Central London area. In addition, they will also be used to deliver household goods and furniture to former homeless people who have moved into permanent accommodation, as well as providing support to other Crisis events and initiatives. According to government figures released in June, 1,250 people were sleeping rough on any given night in England – and London represents almost half of this figure. Leslie Morphy, chief executive of Crisis, said: “This year our 8,000 volunteers expect to welcome over 2,000 guests. The two vans kindly donated by CitySprint will enable us to move supplies and equipment to help us provide warmth, food, companionship and services.”
Gardening in the street
Paragon, the routeing software provider, is sponsoring an initiative for unemployed and homeless young people aged from 18 to 25 years. Set up by Indian Ocean rowing race world record breaker Guy Watts and friend James Grubb, Streetscape offers bespoke landscape gardening services. To get things moving, the organisation is launching a pilot scheme to create a therapeutic garden at Stepney City Farm, Stepney Green. Paragon chief William Salter said: “Streetscape is a brilliant idea that will help unemployed young people find their true potential.”[asset_ref id=”1062”]
Stitch in time
Culina staff have taken up knitting in a bid to support smoothie brand, Innocent, to raise £200,000 for charity, Age UK. As part of Innocent’s “big knit” campaign, staff have so far knitted a total of 300 tiny woollen hats. The hats will be put on special edition bottles of Innocent smoothies as part of the campaign, which will donate 25p for every bottle sold to help make winter warmer for thousands of elderly people in the UK. The big knit campaign has produced 620,000 woollen hats so far this year.
Winning drive
Driver Jason Thomson has become North West Professional Truck Driver of the Year in Mantra Learning’s day of driving aptitude tests. Jason, who works for Hadfield Wood Recyclers, won a Lista six drawer roll cabinet, Kraftwerk tools worth over £500 and 35 hours of DCPC training.
The competition finals were designed to test and celebrate the skills and professionalism of the drivers in the region and were supported by the Road Haulage Association, Skills for Logistics and the Freight Transport Association.
Seventh heaven
TDG forklift driver Marcel van Eck has won the Dutch Best Forklift Driver Award for the seventh time in a row. Marcel, who works at TDG Wijchen in The Netherlands took the title at the Dutch Championship Internal Transport last month. Drivers had to drive five different forklifts. The most important item on the agenda was safety, but also to drive the fastest time.
[asset_ref id=”1063″]Chocoholics
DHL Supply Chain’s Consumer Sector’s co-packing team of 24 hygiene-certified staff has hand-packed chocolates into 230,000 specially designed Thorntons’ Selection Boxes specially for Christmas. Lynn Grady, general manager of DHL’s Consumer Sector’s Co-Pack operations, said: “It was fantastic to be a part of such a fun festive project for such a well loved chocolate brand.”
Online challenge
Palletforce set an online challenge to piece together a jigsaw illustrating a new children’s book which it hopes will engage the next generation in the future of logistics, while, at the same time, teaching them about green issues connected with the transport industry. Michael Conroy, chief executive, said: “Engaging with the next generation is something everyone at Palletforce is passionate about and opening our hub to them is a wonderful way of doing that while having a great time.”
