Huge congratulations to everyone at The Leeds and Moortown Furniture Store on being awarded The Duke of York’s Community Initiative – for the second time.
This prestigious prize is awarded to community groups and charities throughout Yorkshire who are deemed by the Initiative’s Assessors to be making a very real difference to the communities they serve.
The Store, as many of you will already know, began life here at MBC in 1986. Today, more than thirty years on it is based in a 10,000 sq ft warehouse in Seacroft, collects and then gives away more than 6,000 separate items of furniture every year, runs a wholly owned retail arm and employs seven staff.
The Store first collected the DOYCI award in 2011, and as is the scheme’s practice it was invited to reapply in 2016.
This year’s ceremony was held in St Paul’s Hall at Huddersfield University and was attended by more than two hundred representatives from the 42 successful organisations. Presenting the award to LMFS’ General Manager John Gamson, Dr Ingrid Roscoe The Lord-Lieutenant of West Yorkshire commented on how vital the type of work the store does is and thanked everyone for their commitment.
With John at Huddersfield were driver Robbie and two of the store’s volunteers Peter and Danny. Next month, however, three of the team will be travelling to St James’ Palace, London to attend a reception hosted by the scheme’s Patron HRH The Duke of York.
The picture above shows John Gamson (second left) with Dr Roscoe (centre) and representative of the other sixteen West Riding based organistaions that were presented with the award.