Basildon Round Table

Groups share Round Table’s £5k donation

From Basildon Echo, Friday 26th March 2010

A CASH windfall totalling £5,000 has been handed out to a Scout group, a school and an archery club.

Basildon Round Table ran an appeal in the Echo saying it was looking for worthy causes to donate the money to and was swamped with requests.

The main beneficiary is the 1st Pitsea and Vange Scout group, which has been given £4,000 to help pay for a much-needed revamp of its hall, in Riverton Hall, Bardfield, Vange.

The Scout group, which has been running for 80 years and has 60 Scouts, cubs and beavers, is spending the money on new doors, electric window shutters and automatic lighting to make the hall safer and more user-friendly on winter evenings.

The work is part of a larger revamp of the hall, being funded by a £25,000 grant from the Veolia ES Cleanaway Pitsea Marshes Trust.

A new archery club in Basildon is getting £600 from the Round Table.

Judith Shaw, who helps out at Kingston Ridge Scout campsite, which is used by all the Scout groups in the area, has just helped launch the club.

She said: “This money will go to buying proper equipment for the Scouts to use.

“It’s brilliant. Now they can really improve.”

The club meets every Thursday, between 6.30 and 8.30pm.

Willowfield Pre-school, in Steeple View, Laindon, has received £400 towards putting up a steel fence around the school after it was targeted by vandals in 2008.

Robbie Chadwick, community service officer for Basildon Round Table, said: “We were inundated with requests after doing the article in the Echo, but we whittled it down to these three, very worthy causes. We hope this money will do some real good in the community.”