Action’s Project 5000 took place at the end of March and Cayley contributed an outstanding amount to the Carpenter’s Arms Charity. Phil Snowden and I spent hours knocking at every door in Cayley asking people to make any donation, big or small, to Project 5000.

The idea of Project 5000 is to collect as many donations of non-perishable foods as possible. However as Cayley is a catered hall, not many people have tinned beans lying around in their kitchen cupboards. Therefore we decided to take another route and ask Caylians for money donations. People were reluctant to give much money away as loans were diminishing towards the end of term…but luckily most of Cayley had their piggy banks, mugs, plastic cups and shelves filled with pennies!

We collected bags and bags of pennies and after a difficult trek to town with Pat Hannah and Beth Dinning, hours were spent counting penny by penny and sorting them into little plastic bags.  After a long 3 hours, the pennies were exchanged for cash and Cayley had raised an amazing £96.

We phoned Sainsbury’s immediately and asked for a mass order of Tomato, Vegetable and Cream of Chicken soup all costing 17p each. We ordered 188 tins of each flavour resulting in 564 tins of soup!

Harry Stott and Danny White kindly offered to let us use their cars to collect the order. Tom Allright and Tasmin Gordon also came along to help out with the huge amount of soup. We took the soup to the Carpenter’s Arms in town,  a residential rehabilitation centre which works with men aged 18-60 who are challenged by drug and alcohol addictions and look for help to change their lives.

At a recet Action meeting the results of Project 5000 were announced. Sadly, Cayley weren’t even mentioned in the top 5…I spoke to the Action Chair after the meeting and he realised that Cayley had been overlooked. He realised that Cayley had actually collected a staggering amount and deserved a place in the top 3.

CONGRATULATIONS CAYLEY FOR COMING JOINT SECOND IN PROJECT 5000!