June 2006 - Stationary worth over £1/4 million distributed to children

Shahin Butt, a Project Manager for Virgin Megastores was able to secure stationary valued at over £250,000 for Giving Hope to distribute amongst the children in the areas affected by the South East Asia Earthquake.

The stationary items included:

• Over 22,000 hardback bound notebooks;   over 11,000 Lever Arch files; almost 36,500 softback wiro notebooks; nearly 26,000 address books;
  and nearly 12,000 other notebooks - in total over 111,000 items

This was a hugh consignment consisting of over 170 pallets. The stationary was stored in a warehouse in Banbury and required several trucks to transport it to Heathrow before being sent via Cargo to Islamabad for distribution.

Muslim Hands International (MHI) collected the stationary from Islamabad and were instrumental in delivering the stationary to various organisations and outlets for distribution to needy children - and these included:

SOS Children's Villages: The Citizen's Foundation; and schools run by MHI
 

Additionally, some of the statiionary has been distributed to other needy causes, including:

Schools in Bukoba, Tanzania; Schools in Sao Paolo (through Angels of Brazil); and some voluntary-aided schools in the UK.
 

Giving Hope would like to pass on thanks to the following for helping to make this project a big success:

Shahin Butt, Emily Sayer (Virgin Unite), Guy Meisl and Mark Noonan (Virgin Megastores); Mary Barry and the Community Relations team at BA, Pat Germain (BA); Neil Clark, Paul Tuff and the team at BARC (BA Regional Cargo); and Kamran Shahid and the rest of the Muslim Hands International team.