A CARING Pershore company has dug deep and donated £1,500 to keep a town school’s minibus on the road.
Midshire Communications Limited on Aintree Road stepped in to sponsor Abbey Park Middle School’s vehicle which regularly supports a number of community groups across Pershore.
The school use the bus to take small groups of pupils to matches, competitions, sporting events and visits and children are rarely asked to pay towards the fuel to avoid discouraging them from taking part in sporting activities or competitions.
In the last year the minibus was used for a visit to Wimbledon for the day, an Aztec water park, the Royal International Air Tattoo and the Malvern Hills.
As well as being used by the school and its pupils, the minibus is regularly loaned to other organisations including Pershore Riverside Centre for their day trips, Holy Redeemer for their forest school visits and local cubs and scouts groups for their weekend camping visits.
All of the organisations pay a nominal fee to cover the wear and tear costs but in recent years the cost of maintaining the vehicle escalated to around £1,500 to cover such things as the MOT.
Despite the sterling efforts of the school’s Parent Teacher Association (PTA) who each year arrange fund-raising events to help purchase additional items for our pupils, staff were faced with the unwanted prospect of charging pupils to use the vehicle.
However, Geoff Mabbott, Managing Director of Midshire Communications stepped in to lend a helping hand when he was approached by the school.
The cause is close to Mr Mabbott’s heart as his grown up children were formerly pupils at Abbey Park Middle School.
Headteacher Lynn Evans, said: “As with all schools, our funding is becoming increasingly stretched and it is items such as the minibus that were starting to look increasing difficult with the possibility of charging pupils to use it.
“A huge thank you to Geoff who very kindly offered to donate some money towards the annual costs.
“This pledged has not only safeguarded the future of the minibus for our pupils but also for other local clubs like Pershore Youth/Riverside Centre who also use the bus for day trips and the local Scouts and Cubs group who use the bus for some camping visits
“It will even help other schools who use the bus when their own is out at an event or off the road,” she added.
