The Rotary Club of Ilkley Wharfedale has once again held their annual Recycling Collection in the main car park in Ilkley on Saturday 2 October and wish to thank all those who participated.
The collection was in association with The Margaret Carey Foundation which collects bicycles, wheelchairs and walking aids and has them refurbished mainly in prisons (to help prisoners attain a skill and thereby reduce re-offending), they are then donated to people in need in the UK and overseas.
Tools for Africa gives new life to unwanted tools and assembles them into kits for carpenters, builders, automotive repairs, dressmakers etc. and distributes these through WorkAid to African countries so that they can start small businesses and support their communities.
Mary’s Meals provide life-changing meals to some of the poorest children every day they attend school and will use the school backpacks for delivering to schools in third world countries. The spectacles are sorted and calibrated again for use in third world countries.
New this year we were collecting unwanted trainers. The Biasan Charity is collecting trainers for men, women and children largely for the recent influx of refugees from Afghanistan, many of whom have arrived with just the clothes they stand up in. These will be passed through to the Biasan Charity by an Ilkley U3A craft group.
Items collected amounted to: 124 bicycles; 8 wheelchairs; many mobility aids; 12 sewing machines; 4 carloads of tools; approx 25 rucksacks; approx 40 pairs of trainers and 10 carrier bags full of spectacles.
Over the eight years that the Club has run this event over 1,000 bicycles have been collected.