British Legion Poppy Appeal - Nov 2017

British Legion Poppy Appeal - 2017

This is the 14th year that the club has been running the British Legion Poppy appeal and this is probably the largest event the club is involved in each year.

Originally it was a group of five of our members, led by John Stevens, who volunteered to work under the guidance of Joan Ralph (the last remaining British Legion member in Beckenham) to organise at the collection over about half of the Beckenham area and we raised £3702 that year. Following her death in 2009, we combined with John Bennett to cover the whole of Beckenham (BR3) and our involvement has increased year on year.

The last four years, following John Bennett's retirement, the club has taken on the whole responsibility for the Poppy appeal in Beckenham and the amount raised has increased to over £30,000 annually.Each year The St Edmund's Roman Catholic Church has very kindly allowed us to use the ground floor of 11 Village Way, without which we could not operate the Poppy appeal.

A selection of pictures taken during this years appeal

President - nominee Dinah

The annual parade

Peter and Bill 

David and President - elect Tony 

air Force cadets collecting

Our club Poppy Appeal banner

We are indebted to the many members of the public (as well as our Rotarians) who have come forward to collect at supermarkets and stations, some standing there are on as many as five occasions over the two weeks; several bringing in almost £1000 and one person collecting over £900 in just two sessions. However we did have one collecting box stolen from the Odeon cinema this year.

A big thank you to all our volunteers and helpers, including members of the Air Training Corps (1903 Squadron) who raised £1,235 in 5 hours.

This year, so far, we have taken in and counted just over £34,000 and with money still coming in over the next few weeks and are confident of reaching £35,000.

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