How Castle Minibus is ‘super’ helpful

Castle Minibus is celebrating being in operation for 23 years this month. We thought we would take this opportunity to tell you about how we have used our success over the years to ‘pay it forward’and make a difference to these charities that we believe have a significant impact on children, both in and outside of the UK.

As a growing business, we are aware that we can make a significant contribution to charities in our area. Deciding which charities is exceedingly difficult as we’re sure you can appreciate, which is why we have devised our Champion Charity scheme.

Supershoes

Our champion charity for this year, Supershoes are an amazing organisation that provide shoes, baseball boots and hats for children that are fighting cancer in the UK. The shoes are painted and decorated with individual and personal designs, by ‘Super Artists’ and the costs are covered by ‘Super Sponsors’, of which we are one. We recently had a visit from the founder Sarah White, who came to show us the latest pairs of shoes we have donated, and to meet the Castle team.

As our champion charity, alongside our regular monthly contributions, we are working on a ‘trainers from the trainer’ idea, where we will be randomly selecting a single D1 minibus driver training candidate each month and awarding them with a small token gift and in their name, making an additional donation of a pair of Supershoes.

Please take a look at the Supershoes website and see how you can help too: https://www.supershoes.org.uk, or follow the work of the Super Artists on Twitter, and Facebook.

We will be running this ‘boost’ for the rest of 2018 and next year will be selecting a new champion charity for Castle to support. Charities like…

Impact Foundation - Shubhakamana Academy in Kathmandu

The Impact Foundation supports the poorest of families of Nepal, so they can send their children to school without fear of rejection, enabling the most vulnerable members of the community to lead better lives day to day with the added hopes their children’s education may lift them out of abject poverty.

The young man pictured above is called Pyush Maharjan. He is a six-year-old attendee of Shubhakamana Academy, Kiritipur in Kathmandu. Castle Minibus sponsor Pyush and with our annual donation his school fees are covered. Some of the money also goes towards enabling the school to recruit great teachers, develop their resources and maintain the school. To read more about the Impact Foundation and make a donation of your own, follow this link: https://impacttravel.co.uk/impact-foundation

KidsOut

We attend the annual quiz night at Leighton Buzzard Rugby Club and make regular contributions to support the charity that provides disadvantaged children across the UK with exciting memories to cherish. KidsOut takes children on visits to multi-sensory facilities and a host of fun days out, as well as providing a ‘Toy Box’ service, which sends a box of new toys and games to children who have been re-homed due to domestic difficulties.

Find out how you can contribute to a toy box here: https://www.kidsout.org.uk/what-we-do/toy-box/

Helen and Douglas House

A local charity, Helen and Douglas House are a hospice for children in need of palliative care, and a vital resource for parents in need of respite. Castle Minibus donated a minibus and driver to the parents of children who took a tour of memorials together as part of their parent’s support group. We are also supporting a local running group, who are running the Blenheim 7k this year in aid of Helen and Douglas House, we will be providing a minibus and driver to transport the Sunday R.I.O.T (Running Is Our Therapy) club runners to the event, and back to the pub for a hog roast after! This charity runs a lottery to help fundraising efforts of other kinds, and you can play along here: https://www.helenanddouglas.org.uk/support-us/lottery/

Paying it forward

We are a successful business, and still growing and so believe we are in a great position to pay it forward.We’re looking forward to the rest of this year and to seeing many more ‘super smiles’!