Local Poppy Appeal Volunteers Praised

The local community fundraiser, Kevin Forbes, for the Poppy Appeal has sent the following open letter to volunteers involved in the 2012 appeal. It gives details of the fundraising locally as well:

“To all of the volunteers who made 2012 Poppy appeal such a success

Many, many thanks for the time and effort that you put into this year’s Poppy Appeal. We are heading for a record figure. I have already banked £52000 which is absolutely magnificent.

Your efforts are much appreciated and when we analyse the work which needs to be put in to make the appeal such a success it can be seen that many people give a great deal of their time, sometimes in many different ways. All of the cans had to be prepared and labelled, then distributed and finally collected and counted. Then there was the ‘manning’ of the supermarkets. There was an impressive effort from the volunteers to ensure that the tables were always manned sometimes doing double shifts if necessary.

The result of all of this effort was that the totals for the supermarkets Sainsbury’s Asda Morrisons Tesco and B&Q exceeded £30000.

The system of running each of the big store with a separate organiser seems to be provig fruitful

Once again this year three of the supermarkets held onto the cash for us counted the collection and handed over the total in notes at the end of the collection period. We had large poppies on the lamp standards in the town centre and on the approach roads with large Poppy plaques on the police and firestations. In addition we had the building poppies on the Guildhall and at The Racecourse. I hope that this will continue.

In the Maelor Hospital the collection amounted to over £2380. The 450 static boxes placed all around the town collected nearly £11500.

The Poppy Appeal again showed how generous people can be with their time. It is delightful to work with a group of people whose attitude is ‘of course it can be done’.

So whether you labelled,drove,delivered, collected, counted, manned supermarkets, collected on the streets and sometimes multitasked we offer our thanks. The job simply could not have been done without every one of you.

Again this year the help given by students from Yale College and from local Cadets was really impressive. On the Friday and Saturday of the two collecting weekends these wonderful young people raised more than £3000 on the streets of Wrexham. It was particularly impressive that many of these young people gave up some of their half term holiday. These young people and their efforts will be recognised in the form of certificates and awards presented by the relevant Lord Lieutenant. This year a significant number of new volunteers came forward both as individuals and organisations such as Rotary International

Thank you once again and please remember that we could not do it without you.”