As an expression of our Gratitude to the county council, we are now in the process of renovating the old library. A multi-faceted programme of beautifying the garden, painting windows and sorting all the exterior woodwork. A lot of this is showing the effects of 40 years of weathering. To help in the process we contacted Gratitude’s long-term friend Bunty Shah. As a director of a timber company Acrelane from south London, he was very well placed to help. ‘Absolutely…leave it to me.’ Came the enthusiastic response.
He then lined up £1100 worth of top-end timber for our community art project.
“Wow. Thank you for the support!”
As soon as the delivery was sorted Bunty arranged to bring along his good friend Cllr Abhishek Sachdeva. Abhishek has always been supportive and actually, his family foundation has provided all the funding for our Gratitude free school dinners programme last summer. As the library project was arranged by Oliver Dowden, the minister for Media Culture and Sport, we also felt it was absolutely appropriate that we invite County councillor Morris Bright MBE. He accepted our invitation and came to inspect what we are doing with the council property.
County councillor Morris Bright MBE has also been a supporter from the start of Gratitude 8 years ago. It would be safe to say that everyone was thoroughly impressed and actually visibly excited. They loved it. Councillor Morris Bright MBE is planning on bringing all the kids toys in his garage down to the toy store. Bunty is exploring further cooperation with his Foodbank. And Abhishek was stunned and a bit overwhelmed. The team response to our distinguished visitors was very enthusing. The place was immaculately clean as usual, the garden is in progress to become impeccable and every volunteer was standing out in their pink gratitude branded vest. This all bodes very well for the future as we build on our cross-party support. We have brilliant support from both sides of the council. Something we thoroughly appreciate.
Thank you for the photos to Panna Shah and Valeria Fazekas
