JTI volunteers host tea parties for 380 elderly people, with help from wholesalers and retailers
To celebrate the company’s ten-year relationship with charitable partner, Contact the Elderly, JTI staff and salesforce have worked with wholesalers and retailers across the country to host ‘The Big Tea Party’ – a series of events for over 380 isolated, elderly people across the country.
Working alongside Contact the Elderly, the national charity which combats social exclusion among elderly people across the UK, a total of 22 tea parties were organised in community venues and at JTI sites in Weybridge, Crewe and Manchester. 350 JTI volunteers planned the events and JTI’s wholesale trade partners and independent retailers donated goods, such as tea, coffee and biscuits, to help make the tea parties happen, as well as gifts of boxes of chocolates for guests to take home.
The Big Tea Party event is part of JTI’s long term partnership with the charity, which has reached over a thousand socially isolated, elderly people since 2008. Supporting older people is particularly important for JTI, a company which has been operating the UK for over 150 years and has a significant number of former employees who are now pensioners living in England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland.
If you are a local retailer and concerned about older people in your community who may be isolated and could benefit from attending a Contact the Elderly tea party, please consider contacting the charity on 0800 716543 to learn about local opportunities that you could discuss with your customers and receive materials you could share with older people who shop with you.
Ross Hennessy, Head of Sales UK at JTI, comments: “We are proud to be celebrating our 10-year long friendship with Contact the Elderly and are thankful to our generous wholesale and retail partners, who were vital in making our Big Tea Party events such a success. Together with JTI staff, they helped us to bring friendship into the lives of so many socially isolated older people across the country”.
Meryl Davies, CEO Contact the Elderly, comments “The Big Tea Party was an incredible opportunity for Contact the Elderly to work alongside JTI’s sales team. Everyone at JTI got involved in making it a truly special day for our older guests, many of whom have no other opportunities to get out of the house and suffer chronic loneliness”
Rahan Ali-Irshad, Director, United Wholesale Grocers, comments “United Wholesale Grocers is a family run business and we are very much part of our local community; we support lots of local charities and it’s certainly in our ethos to help those less fortunate than ourselves. We have a fantastic relationship with JTI and were delighted to hear about the Big Tea Party and their partnership with Contact the Elderly. We were really pleased to be able to support the project by donating boxes of chocolates as gifts for the older people; it was a perfect fit with our value of making a positive contribution to the community. We’d love to be involved again in the future”.
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