Sanctuary's Income Team reach an all-time high

On Saturday 21st September 13 member of the Income Team (current and former) descended on Wales to climb the Mt Snowdon as part of our team’s effort to raise money for our charity of the year, The Alzheimer’s Society.

The challenge came about after a member of the team made the reference “we’ve reached the peak” during a meeting when we were discussing reasons why a particular patch had increased and I jokingly said, “Good idea, we should climb a mountain to celebrate”. That joke turned into reality through our monthly staff newsletter (Income Matters) and staff from all corners of the country volunteered to take part in the name of charity.

The team alarms went off at 3am in hunt of a summit sunrise but unfortunately the cloudy weather dampened our chances of that happening and added a whole new challenge to the climb, yet our spirits remained high. We decided early on to take a more challenging route to the top (Pyg Track) as we were doing this for charity, and we can safely say the team certainly earnt their sponsorship that day.

The entire team reached the summit in under 4 hours on a treacherous route lined with steep inclines, slippy patches, rocky terrain, tiny ledges, steep drops and less than 2m visibility at times. Several members of the group (including myself and Jerry Springer) had some pretty frightening slips/falls along the route, but everyone played their part to lift us (quite literally) and our spirits to the top. To use a quote from one of my favourite Batman movies “You know why we fall Bruce? It is so we can learn to lift ourselves up again” and everyone certainly did that to get us to the top!

At the time of writing this the team have raised a whooping ￡1830 for our charity of the year (you can still donate by clicking here).

I would just like to say a few thank you/well done messages:

Thank you to Charlotte for volunteering to take the role of team leader, you played an amazing part in co-ordinating the teams and organising everything we needed to know/do to get up and down the mountain safely.

Thank you to Steve Wright, one of your earliest comments was “You’re only as fast as the slowest person” and you took on the role to ensure no one was left behind, lifted the spirits of those struggling and spurred everyone on until they reached the top together.

Thank you to Steph Tilbury who worked behind the scenes to bring everything to together for the event.

And finally, well done and thank you to everyone who gave up their time and took part in this amazing challenge for an incredible charity. I have made some incredible memories that will last a lifetime and feel incredibly proud of our team for what you have achieved.

So what are we going to do next year...

David Barker - Head of Income Services, Housing and Property.

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