7th March 2018
On a snowy Tuesday at the end of February, Matthew Gale and Claire Thompson, who are employees of UPS, visited the depot to present Aquabox with a cheque for $5,000, in recognition of its work across the globe to save lives and relieve suffering, as well as promoting volunteering in the local community.
Following a visit to the Aquabox depot in early 2017, Claire was really inspired by the project and asked us to set up a team building event as part of a UPS conference. To meet this request, we planned and ran a packing event at the UPS conference in Alfreton last summer, where the group enjoyed an energetic morning learning about the work of Aquabox and, more importantly, managing to pack 40 Aquaboxes.
As a result of the success of this event, a second UPS team asked whether they could run a similar event at the Aquabox depot. They visited the depot in September and packed a number of boxes as well as helping to assemble the water filters.
Matthew is on the Community Involvement Committee for UPS. The main goals of the committee are to promote volunteerism and help arrange local projects in which UPS staff participate. He came along to this event at the depot and was inspired by the project and started to spread the word about Aquabox when he returned to the office. He also approached the UPS Corporate team in Atlanta. They were very interested in the project, particularly the volunteering ethos and asked Matthew to write a short “blog” on the day, which was then shared online with 500,000 UPS staff worldwide. Matthew received some very positive feedback from the blog and everyone agreed that this is a very important project.
As a result of this feedback Matthew offered to put Aquabox forward for a charitable donation. Following review and endorsement of the application by UPS Europe the award was approved by UPS Worldwide in the USA at the end of 2017.
Aquabox really appreciates the fantastic support and encouragement it has received from UPS. The trustees would like to thank Claire, for kicking the whole thing off, following her visit to the depot, and then setting up the team building event in Alfreton, and Jenny for arranging the follow up session at the depot.
We would also like to record our special thanks to Matthew for all his drive and enthusiasm in raising the awareness of Aquabox within UPS worldwide, and for securing the generous community award which will enable us to continue the live saving work being carried out by then project and we very much hope that this partnership can continue going forward.