Corporate Responsibility/Charity
Bridgestone staff raised more than £700 for Acorns Children’s Hospice at the company’s recent Olympic-themed sports day. The fundraiser saw staff at the company offices in Leamington Spa competing in events such as rowing, cycling and archery. Local paralympian Anna Turney, who is currently being sponsored by Bridgestone, was invited to award prizes for each individual discipline, as well as an overall team winner.
Michelin Tyre PLC is celebrating 10 years of its Performance and Responsibility Michelin (PRM) programme, the company’s Corporate Social Responsibility charter. In 2002, the company developed the PRM framework to provide a more strategic approach to the efforts it was already making to improve the support it provides to employees, communities and the environment.
Kumho Tyres has launched a summer campaign ‘Cash for Causes’, supported by the Korean brand’s UK dealers and a new website. The company says that it will donate £100,000 to deserving causes, charities, local groups and projects across the country via the network of ECSTA Performance Centre (EPC) independent retailers it supports in the UK through its national distributor Micheldever Tyre Services. So far, Kumho says that over 200 EPC dealers have signed up to take part in the ‘Cash for Causes’ campaign, each selecting two local community projects they feel deserve a donation. Nominated causes then go head to head in a public vote to see which one the community feels should receive the larger share.
Two Hankook Tyre UK employees, product and pricing analyst Mike Olsen and customer service advisor Ben Thompson, have completed the Cycle Madagascar Challenge, and in doing so raised £6,600 for the international development charity, Transaid. Mike and Ben returned from Madagascar – the island off the coast of Africa, not the animated film – after completing a gruelling cycle of almost 500 kilometres across the country’s varied landscapes.
Linglong Tyres, manufactured by Shandong Linglong Tyre, China’s third largest tyre producer, recently supported the automotive industry charity BEN at the Lynwood Summer Fete held at the end of June.
The number of motorists driving with defective tyres remains at a “dangerous and worrying level, warns TyreSafe, commenting on figures recently released by the Ministry of Justice. The statistics reveal 9,639 people were convicted of driving with dangerous or defective tyres at Magistrates courts in England and Wales in 2011.
HiQ has launched a competition to find its 2012 Grid Girl. The winner will represent the brand and its partnership with Breast Cancer Care at the final round of Dunlop MSA British Touring Car Championship racing at Brands Hatch in October and act as its ambassador for ‘Pink October’; the yearly fundraising campaign for Breast Cancer Care. HiQ has targeted £100,000 as its fundraising milestone. Voting on the campaign will be stimulated through HiQ’s Facebook app, part of the brand’s vibrant social networking channels on Twitter and Facebook, where regular updates will also be posted. Nominations are open now, and a top 10 will be created after a period of voting, at which point a second phase of voting will begin, both online and through HiQ’s Facebook app.
The Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents (RoSPA) has urged greater focus on road safety following the publication of annual casualty figures which show the first increase in UK road deaths since 2003.
The figures for 2011 for Great Britain, released by the Department for Transport, show that road deaths rose by three per cent from 1,850 in 2010 to 1,901 in 2011.
Child deaths rose by nine per cent from 55 in 2010 to 60 in 2011, which is particularly disappointing given that the two previous years showed substantial reductions in child deaths. The number of seriously injured children fell by four per cent to 2,352 in 2011. At 19,474, the overall number of child casualties (killed, seriously injured and slightly injured) barely changed between 2010 and 2011.
There were 453 pedestrian deaths in 2011, a rise of 12 per cent from 2010 and the number of seriously injured pedestrians increased by five per cent to 5,454.
Senior executives from the Chartered Institute of Logistics & Transport, the Freight Transport Association, the Road Haulage Association and Transport for London have joined forces with Transaid to organise a charity bike ride from London to Paris, with the aim of raising £100,000 to support Transaid's Professional Driver Training projects in Africa.
Over 50 staff from Micheldever Tyre Services, led by CEO Paul Fox, took part in the British Heart Foundation London to Brighton cycle ride on Sunday 17th June and raised an impressive £15,000 for this important charity. All bar two of the Micheldever team made it successfully to the finish over the gruelling 55 mile course which starts at Clapham Common, South London, and finishes on Madeira Drive, Brighton, which eight miles after the demanding climb of Ditchling Beacon is a welcome relief. Whilst some of the riders were experienced racers others were novices on their first organised ride, which made it all the more notable.
A team of 25 challengers from across the UK transport and logistics industry, including participants from Hankook and Michelin, is preparing for the fundraising challenge of a lifetime, cycling more than 450km across Madagascar, in aid of international development charity Transaid. The group has set a target of raising £100,000, and is leaving for the island on Friday 15 June, with a day’s acclimatisation in the capital of Antananarivo on the Saturday before the main event begins in earnest on Sunday. Proceeds from the event will benefit vital Transaid initiatives across Africa.
Jon Powell has completed the epic Crumball Rally across Europe on a set of Bridgestone Turanza tyres, raising £2,000 for the Friends of Kennel Lane School in Berkshire, where his son is a pupil. Designed to be a low cost event, encouraging drivers to complete the course in a £200 ‘banger’, the Rally ran over three days from 10-12 May. In addition to supplying Powell with the rubber that would see him through the event, Bridgestone also made a £250 donation to his fund.
BEN, the automotive industry charity, in conjunction with the British Motor Industry Heritage Trust, held the first of its two annual car boot sales on Sunday 13 May 2012 at Heritage Motor Centre, Banbury Road, Gaydon, Warwickshire.
Land Rover recently produced its one millionth Discovery vehicle and, to celebrate this milestone and demonstrate the Discovery's versatility and all-round capability, the company decide to send the vehicle on a trip – from Birmingham to Beijing.
For this epic, 50-day, 8,000-mile adventure, Land Rover chose Wrangler DuraTrac tyres for the three vehicles that undertook the daunting journey across more than a dozen countries. The conditions on the way were challenging and varied, including crossing mountains and driving on all sorts of surfaces.
Avon Tyres British GT Championship and British Endurance Championship driver George Murrells has agreed to feature automotive industry charity BEN’s logo on his Ginetta G55 GT3 supercar. Murrells will also undertake further fundraising activities to support and promote BEN, including running in the Silverstone Half Marathon on 10 March, 2013.
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