Plymouth Brethren Christian Church breaks all records in the British Heart Foundation Bag-athon!
For the second year running, the Plymouth Brethren Christian Church (PBCC) have participated in the British Heart Foundation’s (BHF) ‘The Great British Bag-athon’; an initiative to collect unwanted clothing, books, toys and other saleable items from the public and organisations such as the Brethren. These items are then sold in the BHF’s many retail shops throughout the country.
The PBCC rallied to the challenge and donated an incredible 12,998 number of bags during the month of September, to become Bag-athon Legends once again! If the total number of these bags were lined up in a row, this would cover a distance of over four miles. Mike Taylor, Retail Director of the British Heart Foundation, hailed the donation efforts as a “fantastic achievement” during a presentation ceremony held to congratulate a delegation from the PBCC community in October.
At the presentation, the PBCC were able to see the superb facilities at BHF HQ, and learn first-hand from the medical staff, about the life-changing research that is carried out as a result of the generous funding from the British Heart Foundation.
PBCC delegation receives certificate from BHF
The British Heart Foundation’s mission is to ‘keep more hearts beating’, and the data presented during the visit to HQ certainly proves that they are doing this. Since BHF’s inception over 50 years ago, the number of people dying from heart-related illness has more than halved from 180,000 down to 80,000: an amazing achievement in which the BHF have played a huge part. BHF provide funding for research that prevents heart disease, survival training and defibrillators to help save lives following cardiac arrests, and support for people who have suffered with heart disease.
Ten years ago, the British Heart Foundation was only earning around £7m profit from their retail stores; today they are making £35m. This is thanks to fundraising initiatives such as The Great British Bag-athon, and with Mike Taylor stating that each bag could be worth up to £20, this means that the PBCC themselves have donated over £250k within a month, for the benefit of the British Heart Foundation.
Mike Taylor, BHF Retail Director, Presenting to the PBCC
The PBCC are very glad to know that their donation will ‘keep more hearts beating’ and are pleased that they were able to help BHF beat its target in this year’s Bag-athon. Ian Hughes for the PBCC said: “We’ll be back next year!”
Thank you thank you thank you to all the baggers. We do what we can to ‘fight for every heartbeat’
What a fantastic charity to support, we MUST ALL thank BHF for what they do and also thank the PBCC Team for supporting such a great cause. MT ALL and keep going…….
Too right Duane, the secret here is that people are WANTING to help, BHF are wanting to help and we want to help them! thanks to all the WANT to helpers!
10/10 everyone! Excellent work…
Well done everyone…. keep up the good work!! Have you got any more pics of the presentation ceremony – sounded quite interesting!
it was vvvv good and highly educational! get in there! lets get even more bags next time!
Great… as a member of the PBCC, it was so enthusing gathering all the bags in and knowing that the money will go to a good cause. can’t wait for the next one!
I am from the PBCC & was involved in collecting the charity bags for BHF. It was such great fun. Working to a target with a great team & knowing that the money raised from every bag was going towards such a fantastic cause.
I was also involved in the 2012 bag-athon & I’m looking forward to 2014’s challenge. We’ve got a target of 12,998 to beat next year – we had better start collecting now.. 🙂
what a great charity to support, keep up the good work.
Well Done everyone! Great effort.
Thanks to the BHF aswell – all the lives they are saving. Could be one of us one day.
Nearly 13,000 bags?? That’s outstanding. Well done. It’s fantastic to see the support for such a worthy charity as BHF. Go for 20,000 next year!
We won’t have any clothes left after 20,000!!
Yeah…that could start getting tricky!
…we might have to go to BHF to buy some more… 🙂
This was an amazing effort and hugely enjoyable! The daily blogs appearing and the competition between places to see how many bags we could send in, really enthused all the teams to keep the BHF shops stocked to their ceilings!Such a great cause!! Looking forward to 2014 to see if we can beat this fantastic result.
Well done everyone for all your efforts, we all enjoyed joining in on this and very grateful to all the co-ordinators who went round collecting bags and whom kept us informed of our results through the month!
It is very inspiring to think that each bag is another step towards helping BHF advance their amazing work.
That is an amazing number of bags – I think BHF will be a good place to shop for the next little while!
Excellent work – once again 🙂
GR8 work your baggers (again!)! And a huge Thank you to the BHF for all you’re doing in keeping those hearts beating – we Need you!
Great stuff! Can hardly believe how many bags the PBCC donated its amazing!! Roll on the next bagathon I say
thankyou thankyou
This is absolutely amazing! Several in my family have had heart disorders and have benefitted from recent advances in diagnosis and treatment – all made possible by research funded by generosity like this. I’m just wondering, though, will we be able to reach this level next year? Surely the wardrobes must be nearly empty now?!
What a fantastic result and an absolute delight to support the BHF bag-a-thon again – such a fantastic work they do, ‘keeping more hearts beating’ and our results for this bag-a-thon shows how much we appreciate all the British Heart Foundation do, to support lives, as with many many charities we support around the world! Inspirational – let’s keep giving and join together to make a difference to lives worldwide!
In our small way, we can make a difference!
Now that is what i call charity!
AWESOME……. it is easy when you WANT TO DO IT!
Brillant support here from local people 🙂