One of the few positive points to take from the coronavirus pandemic is that as a population we’ve come together in ways we’ve not experienced in generations. From the VE Day parties on people’s driveways to neighbourhood WhatsApp groups making sure everyone is ok, it’s turned neighbours from relative strangers to friends.

At the beginning of lockdown, we sent out an appeal to Waitrose and John Lewis for support from their Community Matters Scheme.  The scheme offers £1,000 per month from each of their large stores and £500 from smaller ones to be share between three charities each month.  The amounts are normally allocated by how many green tokens customers vote for each charity.  However, during the pandemic the shops have, for the large part, given £300 to each charity. The criteria mean that the cheques must be collected in person.  It posed a dilemma for us our London-based employees were furloughed, meaning we had no one available to collect these cheques. Thankfully, in stepped Ecofleet.

Our friends at Ecofleet, founded by owner Farah Asemi, are an environmentally friendly delivery service based in London, offering a carbon-neutral last-mile service that enables retailers to stay one step ahead of the hectic pace of customer expectation.

The company, although new, donate 2% of their profits to us and sent their first donation earlier this year. Passionate about improving the environment and promoting cycling they share many of the same values our charity has. We also love the fact that each electric bike is named after a Disney character!

After hearing about our difficulties in picking up the cheques, Ecofleet kindly offered to collect them on our behalf, so on Tuesday last week, Billy, one of their riders, collected the cheques from stores across London.  These included the Waitrose shop on Wood Street, Kingston Upon Thames, Waitrose on Gloucester Road, South Kensington, and Waitrose on Holloway Road.

A huge thank you goes out to Ecofleet as well as the three Waitrose shops for these kind gestures. Because of schemes such as Community Matters and the support of our brilliant supporters we’re able to continue to fund much need support and information to lung cancer patients throughout these difficult times.

If your business, or the company you work for, would like to find out more about our partnerships, please visit our Corporate partnerships section of our website.