Emsleys announces Charity Partner of the Year as local children's charity, Zarach
We are delighted to appoint local children’s charity, Zarach, to be our Charity Partner of the Year for 2022-23.
This year, we have formed a new charity committee, who will be responsible for coordinating the fundraising efforts throughout the organisations. They will be running a series of events and challenges throughout the year in order to raise funds and appeal to clients and customers in the local area to come together and support Zarach’s ’Every Head a Bed’ campaign.
Zarach are a grassroots charity, set up in Leeds by founder Bex Wilson, a passionate deputy head teacher, who decided to initially help out a family from her school with the gift of new beds for a pupil and their two siblings, after responding to her about whether they were tired by saying ‘I’m always tired Miss, I haven’t got a bed.’ Bex initially imagined this might be an unusual circumstance but quickly realised this was not the case, and after five years, has been of assistance to families all over Leeds - in every postcode through referrals from schools. The worsening cost of living crisis means charities like this are currently overrun with requests for help.
The process for Zarach is simple – they put together bed bundles for those who need them and have also expanded into providing a variety of other essential services to help those who are struggling, such as food parcels and holidays clubs.
Marketing manager at Emsleys, Laura Noble, says, ‘At Emsleys, we have always spent time every year finding ways to give back and help our local communities. With colleagues across eight offices in the East Leeds area there are so many ways we can be involved, we thought the most appropriate way to find a partner was to ask our colleagues for their nominations.
Colleague and director at Emsleys Estate Agents, Jared Thomas, nominated Zarach. He explains ‘I found Zarach’s simple objective to help children and families in the local area a very compelling story. What they do must make a huge difference to people in our own neighbourhoods – and just take the pressure off, at a time when they need it most. I am inspired by Zarach’s energy and hands on approach, the way in which it has grown over the last few years is testament to the work they do and also sadly demonstrates the reality of the cost of living crisis that we are currently living in.
'Up against some other strong nominations, the Zarach story stood out for our colleagues. Working in the sectors we do, such as property, conveyancing and family law we wanted to work with a charity that helps these areas of the community as well and importantly makes a difference in the areas where we live and work.’
Andrew Greenwood, director at Emsleys says, ‘We look forward to engaging with our colleagues and clients to support this wonderful charity.
‘The Emsley charity committee is planning a programme of events for this year to fundraise for Zarach with the aim of achieving enough to provide 52 bed bundles – one for every week of the year. Our ideas will include office collections, raffles, events, completing sporting challenges, using our branches and offices as drop off points and hubs where we can get clients and local communities involved in our fundraising. We will also be encouraging colleagues to help out on projects where Zarach need volunteers and creating these opportunities in work’s time.
'We hope that we can make a difference and help families in need through our efforts and also by raising awareness through our client base of what amazing work Zarach are doing. One of the first things we will be helping Zarach with is raising awareness of their petition to ‘End Bed Poverty’. Just like food poverty, bed poverty is a real concern nationwide and Zarach have used their platform to raise awareness of this and draw the attention to Government of the need to address this with a national strategy.’
