CHARITY FOCUS
Engineering ambition!
How The Hubb Foundation and JCB are joining forces to tackle holiday hunger, raise aspirations and open new career paths for children across Stoke-on-Trent.
For almost a decade Stoke-on-Trent has held the dubious accolade of being one of the most deprived cities in the UK – 19,000 children are deemed as living in absolute poverty and often go hungry, especially in school holidays.
In stark business terms, these children and young people are, of course, Chamber members’ potential employees and that deprivation often converts into poor school results and little career direction.
But across the city things are changing.
Charity The Hubb Foundation has been hailed nationally as a shining example of what can be achieved through Department for Education, Local Authority, school and community collaboration through its Holiday Activities and Food( HAF) programme.
And with major business support it is now taking its mission- to improve children’ s life chances and raise aspirations- to the next level.
Collaborating with Staffordshire-based digger giant JCB has enabled the Foundation to bridge crucial holiday care gaps and expand its impact.
The government-backed HAF programme covers only Easter, Summer and Christmas holidays, but now JCB is funding care for each of the three half-term breaks, at a cost of £ 300,000 over the next three years as well as funding a marketing and communications officer post to help the organisation grow.
It is a partnership that is close to the heart of JCB chairman Lord Bamford, whose globally successful business has two factories in Cheadle, four sites in Uttoxeter and major production units at its World Headquarters in Rocester.
The relationship began during the first Covid-19 lockdown in 2020, when chefs at JCB’ s World HQ in Rocester prepared 35,000 meals for the charity to deliver to vulnerable families across Stoke-on-Trent. While over the past four years, the two organisations have collaborated on the company’ s annual Christmas Toy Appeal, with the Foundation distributing almost 6,000 donated gifts from JCB employees to disadvantaged children throughout the city.
Lord Bamford said:“ The Potteries and the wider North Staffordshire area have always been close to my heart. In the 1960s when I was a young man, Stoke-on-Trent was the place to go to for entertainment, so I know it very well from those days.
“ As a business, JCB has always had suppliers from the area from our very early days and that’ s a tradition that I’ m pleased to say continues to this day.
“ As our company has grown, we have employed more and more people from Stoke-on-Trent and in fact more than a quarter of our UK workforce, some 2,000 people, live in the city.
“ It’ s important that businesses like JCB give back to the community as they grow.
“ JCB and its employees have been helping vulnerable children in the city for more than 40 years, raising many millions of pounds.
“ Anything JCB can do to support children to ensure they are healthy, happy and well educated is very important to JCB and very important to me.
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