Prepare for Global domination! On the 9th July, two teams from Liberty Global SSC will be taking part in the 2022 Rotary Club Dragon Boat challenge taking place at Pugneys Country Park. We have set a collective fundraising target of £2,000 - to be split equally between Bradford Central Foodbank and the Yorkshire Air Ambulance. We will be raising funds leading up to the event through sponsorship and various events to support these two important charities. Bradford Central Foodbank is part of The Trussell Trust’s network of 428 foodbanks, working to tackle food poverty and hunger in our local communities, as well as across the UK. Bradford is ranked the 5th most income deprived local authority in England with 29% of children living below the poverty line. Due to benefit changes, delays, debt, homelessness, domestic violence families are left without any money at all for weeks or months at a time, they can’t feed their families and can only turn to a Foodbank for help. The foodbank works through a referral system with over 100 frontline agencies in Bradford who refer families so they know every family they help is desperate for food, helping approx 50 families or 100 people a week! This means that they give away approx 169 shopping bags of food a week, the equivalent of £1,375 a week. All of this food is donated by the generous people of Bradford. Yorkshire Air Ambulance is an independent charity providing a lifesaving rapid response emergency service to 5 million people across the whole of Yorkshire. To keep both of their Air Ambulances maintained and in the air, they need to raise £12,000 every single day, which is the equivalent of £4.4m a year. The Charity was set up in 2000 and with the addition of the second air ambulance in 2007, YAA now operate their own Dedicated Air Desk for rapid dispatch of their helicopters to an incident. The swift medical interventions provided by the air ambulance crews have a major impact on a patient’s chance of survival and subsequent quality of life. Yorkshire has a vast topography that not only includes remote, rural and densely populated areas but also includes major motorways and road networks such as the M62, M1, A1 and M18. On average, dispatch time is around 2 to 3 minutes and patients are transferred to the nearest major trauma centre, flying at speeds of up to 160 mph. As part of the team’s fundraising efforts, we will be co-ordinating a number of initiatives leading up to the event itself including an in-office rowing competition, a raffle, bake sale, a ‘guess the number of sweets’ jar and much, much more.