Ampthill pre-school celebrates its success in Westminster

The event was held to mark the success of Tesco’s flagship community grant scheme, Bags of Help, and included MPs, Tesco employees and representatives from Groundwork.

The Ladybird Forest Pre-School offers wraparound care for children in Ampthill, and used its £4,000 grant to extend facilities.

They created a larger space, and allowed for additional places in its popular Forest School. This provided much-needed childcare places in the area.

Bags of Help sees money raised from the sale of carrier bags awarded to thousands of local community projects every year.

Representatives from 50 groups joined the exclusive Parliamentary event on June 18.

Since launching in 2015, the scheme has awarded more than £52 million to more than 16,000 projects all over the UK. More than 13,000 groups in England have shared in over £40 million.

Jessica Dean, local communications manager for Tesco in the East of England said: “Bags of Help continues to be a great success and we wanted to get some of our funding recipients involved in helping us celebrate. Each of the groups has a big part to play in their communities and it’s important that we brought everyone together to recognise that.

“It’s a real privilege to see community projects thriving thanks to the funding.”

At the event, the groups – who are all Bags of Help funding recipients – got the chance to meet their local MPs and to hear how the funding has impacted upon recipients all over the country.

Tesco customers get the chance to vote for three different groups each time they shop. Every other month, when votes are collected, three groups in each of Tesco’s regions are awarded funding.

Bags of Help funding is available to community groups and charities looking to fund local projects that bring benefits to communities. Anyone can nominate a project and organisations can apply online.

To find out more visit www.tesco.com/bagsofhelp