Community groups from across Scotland joined MSPs, Tesco colleagues and partners at a celebration event at the Scottish Parliament on 9 May 2018. The event celebrated over 2000 community projects across Scotland receiving £6 million from the Tesco Bags of Help programme.

The event was organised to mark the success of the supermarket’s flagship community grant scheme, Bags of Help. The initiative sees grants raised from the sale of carrier bags awarded to thousands of local community projects every year.

To mark the success of the project so far, Tesco and greenspace scotland invited representatives from more than 30 groups and partners to an exclusive Parliamentary event at Holyrood.

Tony McElroy, Tesco’s Head of Communications in Scotland, said:

“To have awarded this amount of money to thousands of groups all over the UK is a fantastic achievement – and it’s all down to our customers. Bags of Help continues to be a great success and we wanted to get some of our funding recipients involved in helping us celebrate. Each of the groups has a big part to play in their communities and it’s important that we brought everyone together to recognise that. It’s a real privilege to see community projects thriving thanks to the funding.”

At the event, the groups – who are all Bags of Help funding recipients – got the chance to meet their local MSPs and to hear how the funding has benefited communities all over the country.  All of the groups contributed to the show-and-tell bringing into Parliament objects that illustrated their project.  I think we can confidently say it was the first time a kayak has been in the Garden Lobby!

Tesco works with environmental charities greenspace scotland and Groundwork to put the funding into action.

Emma Halliday, community enabler coordinator at greenspace scotland, said:

“Bags of Help is breathing life into community projects all over Scotland. Working on the frontline of these projects, alongside Tesco, we see projects going from an idea, right through to completion. The funding is having a real impact on communities and this event will raise awareness of that.”

Tesco customers get the chance to vote for three different groups each time they shop. Every other month, when votes are collected, three groups in each of Tesco’s regions are awarded funding. In Scotland, £500,000 is shared every 2 months by 225 projects.

Bags of Help funding is available to community groups and charities looking to fund local projects that bring benefits to communities. Organisations and groups can apply online and if you need any help, please contact our friendly team of Community Enablers – contact details here

Take a look at the online map to see projects near you that have benefited from Bags of Help funding