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Rotarians go that egg-stra mile for Southampton schoolchildren
Story By SHAUN BUTLER
The Rotary Club of Southampton Magna enjoyed an egg-citing Easter by helping to dish out chocolate eggs to primary and secondary schools across the south coast city.
Thanks to Southampton Magna’s involvement with the Wessex Rotary Shoebox scheme, they were made aware that a quantity of Easter Eggs were available to Rotary clubs.
Silver Crane Ltd, who generously provide warehouse space and loading facilities for the 20,000 shoeboxes collected each year by the scheme, had a large number of miniature Swiss Easter Eggs surplus to their requirements.
From this lead The Big Difference, a food distribution charity in Southampton, gave away the chocolate eggs to over 70 primary and secondary schools equating to over 225,000 eggs reaching around 36,000 children. This is probably the largest amount of chocolate given away in Southampton and possibly nationally.
Sanjay Mall, who as well as being Chief Executive of The Big Difference is also a member of Southampton Magna Rotary Club, followed up the lead and after conversations with the warehouse manager at Silver Crane arranged to collect the eggs.
This meant several trips to Silver Crane’s warehouse in Boscombe in Bournemouth, with the eggs being stored at Hamble near Southampton ready for distribution.
“over 225,000 eggs reachED around 36,000 children IN OVER 70 PRIMARY AND SECONDARY SCHOOLS.”
The Big Difference Team then came up with the idea of giving all the chocolate eggs they could to Southampton school children.
This was a huge logistical challenge that involved The Big Difference team co-ordinating with the schools. Rotarians, along with other volunteers, were then involved in counting the packs ready to be collected by the schools.
All this was achieved in three weeks thanks to volunteers from The Big Difference, Southampton Magna Rotary, Gi Media and SCRATCH where the event took place.
The Lord Mayor of Southampton attended and was delighted with how smoothly the operation went with most of the schools collecting the eggs for their children. The success of the project was filmed and reported by BBC South Today, ITV Meridian and the Daily Echo newspaper.
The message was a clear one which was about feeding communities and uniting hearts and that we wanted every child to have a smile on their face.
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