Action for Children April fundraiser

The Action for Children “30 Days Your Way” challenge has been a fabulous opportunity for us to get active throughout April and raise crucial funds as a team.

The challenge: walk, run, cycle or swim your way to 30 miles this April for the 30% of children in poverty. 

8 of us at Philtronics took part in the challenge and together we have reached a total of 645 miles and raised an outstanding £2,445 for Action for Children thanks to donations from family, friends, acquaintances, customers, suppliers and business partners. We would like to thank them all for their support, especially RNA, Ministry of Furniture, Phil & Nancy, Prosys Computing, AN Supplies, Turner Precision and Atamate for their particularly generous donations.

The funds we have raised with fellow Team Ospreys members will help support the existing “Bouncing Back” programme which is delivered to local secondary schools by Action for Children in partnership with the Ospreys in the Community. We have been heavily involved with this initiative from the onset following the first Swansea Byte Night event back in October 2019.

Bouncing Back is an early intervention resilience building programme which provides group discussion, practical tools and coping skills to enable young people to manage their day-to-day emotional wellbeing and reduces the risk of more intense mental issues.

At the end of each Bouncing Back programme, each participant receives a Mental Health First Aid Kit, providing them with resources that support them to manage their mood and sustain improvements in their emotional wellbeing.

This virtual event was a great opportunity to get out and about after months of lockdown and a nice little team building exercise:

• Collette, one of our Senior Production Operative, had already taken part in Byte Night with us previously so she was aware of the fundraising aspect of the challenge. She decided to walk back and forth to work whenever possible and go on longer walks with her family on the weekend.

• Rob, our Chief Technical Officer, is a regular runner so he was part of the team before he knew it. It would probably take him less than 4 hours to run 30 miles, easy for some!

• Jay, our Materials Controller, found it especially challenging to make time for running with the arrival of his baby boy on Easter Sunday.

• Chris, our SMT Operator, said his girlfriend was doing a similar walking challenge but needed to reach 100 miles in April so he was going to walk with her.

• Leon & his dad Byron who both work in our Stores department decided to do the challenge together, sometimes it’s easier to find the motivation when you have a walking buddy: “We wanted to start walking as we started to eat healthier and move more and the Action for Children campaign was a perfect reason to get started and motivated”.

• Simon, our MD, did a combination of cycling and walking, reaching a total of 300 miles by the end of the month.

• Anne, our Finance Director, made a point of going out for a walk every day throughout April and managed to lose a few pounds in the process: "Spending a lot of time outdoors after months of lockdown has been amazing and knowing that we have raised some serious money for Action for Children as a team is awesome”.

The GivePenny donation page is still open so if you would like to make a contribution, there is still time, please click on the following link: https://givepenny.com/simonpritchard_30_days_your_way_cycling

Action for Children has been our chosen charity for the past 3 years and we have organised regular fundraisers such as bake sale, gaming tournaments, sponsored Pen Y Fan climb, raffles, etc involving as many staff members as possible. Knowing that the funds we have raised go towards a programme like “Bouncing Back” and help make a difference in the local community is something very important to us. We hope that this virtual event will be a springboard for future events and that our Philtronics Squad will get bigger and better with time.

In the meantime, our “30 Days Your Way” team will get a chance to discuss the positive outcomes of their fundraising efforts in the next few weeks via a Team’s video call with the Action for Children facilitators, staff team and a few young people who have benefitted from the programme.

We look forward to speaking to them!