Partners team shows York it cares

05/07/2022 11:43:49

The Partners team has been getting involved with York Cares’ Big Community Challenges for 12 years now. We’ve done it all, from painting and cleaning to gardening and even a little bit of demolition! It’s a great way for us to give back to the community in York with the added bonus of getting us out of the office and into some fresh air for a few hours.

This year’s challenge has been all about creating ‘Green Corridors’ throughout sites on the West side of York by connecting green spaces, improving wildlife habitats and reducing the isolation of wildlife populations. Raring to get stuck in, Partners director Monica Green was first in line to try her hand at the industrial strimmer. After a safety briefing, she turned out to be a natural, and we’re proud to say the park has never looked so neat and trimmed.

The rest of the team started the challenge with some light litter picking… or so we thought! An angle grinder, garden chair, baby bath seat and a space hopper later we had begun to question if we were really in a park or a branch of Argos. This goes to show the benefits of regular attention to these outdoor play spaces.

After we were satisfied we’d bagged up every empty plastic bottle we could find, we joined in with the group effort to turn over some turf in one area of the park that needed some special attention. Our teammates from Aviva had already put us to shame by digging an irrigation channel and filling it with gravel… what a group of heroes!

Of course, no York Cares Big Community Challenge would be complete without a quick pitstop for biscuits, although in the heat we all decided to forego a cup of tea and stuck to downing water instead (before properly disposing of the bottles).