Openreach Apprentices devoted their own time to deliver 45,000 poppies for charity.
Eighteen apprentices visited hundreds of shops in the north west of England to help the charity raise funds to support serving and former members of the armed forces on behalf of the Royal British Legion.
Acting operations manager Ryan Lewin, who helped co-ordinate their efforts alongside Rob Davies and Stuart Williams-White, said: “Last year apprentices in Liverpool could devote a whole volunteer day to distributing poppies.
“This year was extra challenging as the original all-day absences of the apprentices were reduced to a half day at short notice due to issues with the work stack.
“They all had to rally together and work in their own time to get the task completed so as not to let the Legion down,” he said.
Although time was short, the Liverpool apprentices exceeded the 20,000 poppies distributed last year by delivering 25,000 and newcomers Manchester equaled Liverpool’s 2011 total.
Apprentice David Hamilton said: “We visited 100s of shops and not all of them were prepared to take the poppies, so it wasn’t straight forward. We also had to note down the new places to add to last year’s list. We’ll be back in a few weeks and hopefully our efforts will have raised even more than last year.”
The apprentices were Dave Lacken, Kieran Simpson, Phil Moss, Luke Hill, Sam Shackleton, Craig Bolton, Dave Thorpe, Stephen Heapy, James Stott and Tyrone Royales from Manchester and Richard Houghton, David Hamilton, Lauren Ashworth, Antony Clarke, Sam Conley, David Ward, Michael Barry and Daniel Shone from Liverpool.
Well done all.
