Harvey Girls and Dads4Dads has bagged a share of a £12.5million carrier bag charge fund

Harvey Girls is delighted to announce it has bagged £8,000 from a Tesco funding scheme.

Tesco teamed up with Groundwork to launch the second round of its Bags of Help funding initiative, which sees grants of £12,000, £10,000 and £8,000 – all raised from the 5p bag levy – being awarded to local outdoor community projects.

Thank you to everyone who voted in local Tesco stores for our project!

Work will now begin with the help of East Staffordshire Borough Council on bringing the project to life – to create a Harvey Girls and Dads4Dads “Nature Walk on the Washlands”.

The Washlands in Burton on Trent is currently an open accessible space. Harvey Girls and Dads4Dads will create a pushchair family friendly walk with tracker posts to follow, which will help local families with small children engage with their local natural environment.

Ian North, Chief Executive of Harvey Girls and Dads4Dads had this to say, “Each year our existing outreach service supports 180 hard to reach families, and over 80 parents and 130 children benefit from our sessional support services. Many of our service users have asked us about local accessible pushchair and health walks – the location of this proposed project is within walking distance of many of our families, and would benefit all local residents, not just our beneficiaries.”

Lindsey Crompton, Head of Community at Tesco, said: “Bags of Help has been a fantastic success.

“We been overwhelmed by the response of our customers and it’s been great to give people a say on how the money will be spent in their community. We can’t wait to see the projects come to life.”

Voting ran in stores from 31 October to 13 November – with customers choosing which local project they would like to get the top award using a token given to them at the check-out in store.

Tesco estimates that around six million votes were cast in stores up and down the UK.

Since launching in 2015, Bags of Help has awarded more than £24m across 2,421 local projects.

And from 1 December, customers will be able to vote for local groups all year round, every time they shop and grants will be awarded monthly – meaning that thousands more projects will benefit from the scheme.

Funding will now be awarded to groups who are seeking to use and develop outdoor spaces in ways that will benefit their local community, and money will be available in smaller amounts, making it more accessible.

Customers will get the chance to vote for three different groups each month. At the end of each month, when votes are collected, three groups in each of Tesco’s regions will be awarded funding.

Groundwork’s national chief executive, Graham Duxbury, said:

“It’s just the beginning for Bags of Help and we’re really excited about the future.  The scheme will be permanently open for applications, and as grants can now be used for not just the development of, but also for the use of local outdoor spaces, we expect even more groups will now have the chance to benefit.

“It’s projects like these that really help to capture the public’s imagination by illustrating what can be achieved when communities are given the support and the encouragement they need to create better places where they live.”