GE staff go for it with ambitious Help for Heroes fundraising

GE employees in Angus have rallied round and played their part in helping to raise £350,000 to provide lifelong support to wounded, injured or sick service personnel and veterans.

Over the past two years the global firm has raised the sum as part of a company-wide drive that has included charity bike rides, bake-offs, Tough Mudder challenges and concerts.

The fundraising effort is now directly helping to rebuild lives after funding a GE wellbeing suite at the Help for Heroes Recovery Centre in Catterick, North Yorkshire.

GE in Scotland, which has sites in Montrose and Aberdeen, contributed £10,490 through a series of fundraising activities, including the Tough Mudder event at which more than 100 employees took on military-style obstacles.

Staff also organised a superheroes dress-up day event.

Another quirky fundraiser was an Angus team’s participation in the Rust to Rome challenge, in which fitters from the Montrose site tackled a 4,000-mile round trip from Edinburgh to Rome in a 1995 Volvo 850 with 240,000 miles on the clock.

Taking inspiration from the movie Dumb and Dumber, the car was disguised as a dog and the team completed the challenge to raise £1,500.

The fundraising was spearheaded by Tony Carlin, operations quality manager for GE in Scotland, and Nicole Cameron, HR manager for GE in Scotland, both of whom served in the Royal Air Force.

Help for Heroes CEO Mel Waters said: “The GE wellbeing suite is an excellent addition to Phoenix House and is already helping our beneficiaries achieve their goals.”

Participants in the Tough Mudder fundraiser.