Paddy Bishopp - Charity Begins At Home

Posted by Paddy on 28/06/2011

Next month we once again burst into action setting up two coffee stations (don't tell anyone but they also sell our tea and hot chocolate as well) at Red Rose Chain's Theatre in The Forest at Rendlesham Forest in Suffolk. This year they are performing 12th Night, another Shakespearian classic and if you have never been this event it is a must, it is set against the backdrop of the stunning Rendlesham Forest and is designed to enchant all the family.

What I have not mentioned is that all the profits from the coffee stations are kept by Red Rose Chain to help them not only help fund the event but support the great work that they do. They are entirely independent and self-sustaining, creating original productions that confront social concerns, often working with overlooked or hard-to-reach groups to create powerful and insightful stories that demand to be told. They create new plays and films through a unique process that involves working with all sorts of people to develop candid and authentic stories. They have collaborated with prison inmates, young people in care, single parents and members of drug rehabilitation projects to name but a few. Whatever they do, they aim to give these people a voice through original work and a chance to experience high quality art without barriers, without prejudice and without patronizing them.

Having worked with them for the past three years and met the amazing people they work with I am very proud to be one of their sponsors. In the past we have also sponsored The Aldeburgh Food and Drink Festival, we worked with The YES project in Lowestoft that took 13 children from schools in deprived areas and taught them the skills to become entrepreneurial and have supported charities from Macmillan to Sue Ryder to Help for Heroes.

You will see that all these charities are UK based and we made a policy from when we started to support UK and local charities. We are a very proud Suffolk based company and also fly The British flag by keeping all production of our coffee within our beautiful shorelines.

'But you are a coffee company who work with a raw product from all round the world', I hear you cry, 'and all coffee companies shout about the charitable work that they do around the coffee plantations'. There is a good reason for this, because most of us do amazing work to support the coffee growing nations. Let me do a quick shout about Paddy and Scott's, we work with Fair Trade and Utz certified, we support plantations such as http://www.fazendadalagoa.com/aboutus and have a very strict ethical buying policy. We also use aluminum free packaging and are one of the few coffee companies with a recyclable logo on our packaging.

Any charitable cause supported by any company is a good thing, whether home or abroad, we have chosen to work local charities because we already do so much charitable work abroad with our plantations. It is our way of giving back to a community that supports us by buying our product, just like we support the communities that we buy from.

For more information on buying tickets for Red Rose Chain please visit http://www.redrosechain.com/