Community Life Champion Asda Eastleigh

Note: Cecily Casey is the Community Life Champion for Asda Eastleigh.

Last Friday we were very busy!

We raised money for Children in Need, and Eastleigh MP Mike Thornton also held his first constituency surgery at Asda Eastleigh on Bournemouth Road.

Firstly we had a beautiful Pudsey cake made by Stephanie from Produce, which we raffled off for Children in Need (CiN) in our canteen.

Pudsey Cake - for Children in Need. Fundraising at Asda Easeleigh. — Pudsey Cake – for Children in Need. Fundraising at Asda Easeleigh.

Then I got to run around the shop floor photographing all the colleagues who had dressed up for CiN. Produce came as Bananas, peas, chilli, sweetcorn and Spiderman! (We think he came with the bananas!)

Others from Home Shopping were wearing onesies and our office colleagues had joined in as well in the Pudsey hoodies. Everyone paid a donation to not wear uniform.

Asda Eastleigh's Produce colleagues dressed up for Children in Need 2014. — Asda Eastleigh’s Produce colleagues dressed up for Children in Need 2014.

Mike Thornton MP: constituency surgery at Asda

Mike Thornton MP for Eastleigh came in about 10:00 with an assistant and I settled them into the Asda Cafe in one of the booth seats.

Mike had a pull up banner which we put up facing the customers walking past.

Mike Thornton MP for Eastleigh at Asda for Children in Need.

I was worried that the visit wasn’t going to be a success as no one had signed up to the time-sheet in the shop.

I needn’t have worried; as when I spoke to Mike he was delighted to have spoken to several constituents about quite serious matters, as well as chatting to several other people.

We will be going ahead with another constituency surgery in the New Year.

Mike Thornton MP: constituency surgery at Asda Eastleigh.

Then Pudsey got in on the act by turning up and getting Mike to help him collect for BBC Children in Need! He was very good at it, too!

Pudsey: tour of Asda

Pudsey did a tour of the shop and went for a cuppa before visiting the Fryern Infants School and being escorted around the School by two enthusiastic young helpers who went into every class, the gym and the library in case someone missed him!

My last engagement of the day was at the offices of Aviva in the Hampshire Corporate Park. 50 volunteers were manning the phone lines for donations to BBC-CiN. I took along some refreshments for them and was there to help out serving tea and snacks.

We were busy at Aviva call centre for Children in Need.

It was very exciting when the tally board starting logging calls and we were over 100 within minutes of the programme going live on air. All the volunteers were in fancy dress, some as Superheroes, St Trinians, Disney, Mad Hatters and “Loadsa Dosh”!

While I was making tea, Pudsey popped in again to cheer on the volunteers and quite a few took selfies with him.

Finally we went home at about 8:30. Phew!

My name is Cecily Casey. I’m the Community Life Champion for Asda Eastleigh.

Part of my work is to get out and about in our neighbourhood volunteering and generally supporting local charities, schools and community groups.

We invite them into store to raise funds and awareness, or use our Community Suite free of charge for their meetings.

You can contact me in store on 023 8026 8341 x 222 or email on community_eastleigh@asda.co.uk.

You can follow me CommunityChampion (@AsdaEastleigh) on Twitter to catch all the news about our store events.

We are offering the use of some of our office space to the community to be used free of charge by non profit organisations as well as the facility to hold meetings/workshops/coffee mornings in our cafeteria.