Green Light Trust boosted by Virgin Money donation
Green Light Trust is proud to confirm a partnership with Virgin Money that will help Green Light Trust towards its goal of becoming a self-sustaining organisation.
As part of the sponsorship, Virgin Money will donate £25,000 to help the Suffolk based organisation achieve self-sustainability over the next few years. This sum will be matched by a £25,000 donation from Virgin Unite, the not-for-profit foundation of the Virgin Group.
Green Light Trust brings communities and landscapes to life with hands-on learning through local woodland and wild space restoration programmes. The funds will enable the organisation to recruit a resource to train members of the local community in their programmes, identify new revenue streams for the organisation and provide training for disadvantaged young people to help get them into employment.
Nigel Hughes, co-founder and chief executive of Green Light Trust, said: “We are honoured and delighted that Virgin Money is supporting our business development. It comes at a pivotal moment as we celebrate our 20th anniversary. The environment and peoples interaction with it is a key focus of Green Light’s work. We are confident that with the help of such a respected organisation we will be able to meet our ambitious target of creating 200 projects and impacting on another 100,000 children by 2013.”
Jayne-Anne Gadhia, chief executive at Virgin Money, said: “Virgin Money realises the importance of supporting environmental causes and Green Light Trust is an excellent organisation that we are delighted to support towards a sustainable future.”
Other than the £50,000 donation, Virgin Money will also be on hand to help the organisation optimise its own non-charity revenues and achieve its ambitious plans."
Virgin Money will not receive any profit on their donation as part of the partnership.
Green Light Trust aims to bring communities to life through working with nature. This involves the creation of community-owned woodlands and other wild spaces; Forest School leadership training; workshops for children of all abilities; and global partnering for deeper environmental understanding - where links include the Hunstein Range, Papua New Guinea and Bialowieza Forest, Poland.
Green Light Trust currently has 45 projects operating in Suffolk, Norfolk and Essex, with more planned across England.
The organisation is run from an award-winning headquarters, The Foundry, which is carbon neutral and uses natural energy systems.
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Notes for editors
For further information
Grant Bather, PR Manager, Virgin Money.
Tel: 0207 111 1012
About Virgin Money
Virgin Money is Virgin’s financial services arm and was established in 1995.
Virgin Money has over two million customers and offers a wide range of financial products across lending (e.g. credit cards and personal loans), savings (e.g. deposits, investments and pensions) and protection (e.g. life insurance, home insurance and car insurance) to the UK market.
Virgin Money Personal Financial Service Ltd is authorised and regulated by the Financial Services Authority (FSA). Registered Office: Discovery House, Whiting Road, Norwich NR4 6EJ. Registered in England no. 3072766. Entered on the Financial Services Register (www.fsa.gov.uk/register), Register Number: 179271
About Virgin Unite
Virgin Unite is the not-for-profit foundation of the Virgin Group. Its aim is to drive business as a force for good by revolutionising the way in which the business and social sectors work together to tackle the tough challenges facing the world today. We do this by finding the people and ideas that can have the greatest impact and helping scale them up – either by incubating the ideas until they are ready to stand on their own or by mobilising the Virgin businesses behind them (or sometimes both). For more information, please visit www.virgunite.com.
About Green Light Trust
Green Light Trust is an environmental education charity established in 1990. It aims to educate people of all ages to become more responsible citizens, helping people to live in harmony with nature. Children, Community, Biodiversity and Global Kinship are its 4 cornerstones. Green Light cut its teeth in 1990 in the rainforests of Papua New Guinea helping to conserve 2,000 square miles of threatened virgin rainforest which still stand today. Green Light Trust works with local UK communities assisting them to create, design and manage their own wild spaces and woodlands. It also runs extensive environmental education programmes for businesses looking to improve their CSR agenda.
