Harvest Housing Group has pledged its support to local charity, Sailing for the Disabled, by raising £3,000 for them at a staff quiz night held earlier this month.
Harvest, whose head office is in Levenshulme, Manchester, is a registered social landlord operating throughout the North West with a number of different housing associations and companies, including Derwent & Solway in Cumbria, providing affordable homes and community support for their tenants.
Harvest’s focus however is not exclusively limited to their own neighbourhoods but aims at benefiting the entire community at large. One of the ways they do this is by supporting local charities and groups as a way of ‘putting something back’.
Sailing for the Disabled was nominated to receive the money by Derwent & Solway Director, Robert Porter.
Commenting on his decision to donate the money to Sailing for the Disabled, Robert says:
“The new experiences and opportunities that they offer to people less advantaged than ourselves is just fantastic and you can’t help but be touched by that.
As an entirely volunteer-led project, their achievements in getting this scheme up and running are truly incredible and we are delighted to show our support in making this contribution.”
All money raised for Sailing for the Disabled will go towards securing the future of the charity and financing their especially adapted yacht, which is berthed at Maryport Marina.
The yacht offers people of varying physical abilities a real hands-on sailing experience under the careful supervision of fully qualified crew and carers.
Sailing for the Disabled was set up by local skipper Ged Doran in 2001 and since then the charity has gone from strength to strength.
He comments:
“This generous donation from Harvest Housing is a great help to us. We’ve got a great bunch of people who work incredibly hard to make this project a success and this money will help secure our position and help us take the charity forward so that we are hopefully able to help more and more people.”
Sailing for the Disabled have recently had permission from the Royal Yachting Association to train and instruct blind people to operate the yacht’s radio communications, and also have an audible tactic compass on board so that they are now able to steer the yacht themselves.
Also in the planning is to add a second boat. Ged and his team are currently considering the purchase of a 72ft fishing boat, which they hope will widen their scope to also benefit community groups and to aid in the training of local youngsters.
And it is hoped that the money from Harvest will help them achieve this next big step.