Customer Service Team donate £600 to women’s refuge Gilgal

Our Customer Service Team have donated £600 to Birmingham women’s refuge charity Gilgal after they won the Best Team category in our West Midlands to West Indies Challenge for Wellbeing Month.

Gilgal is a safe house, a refuge at a confidential address in Birmingham, providing short-term emergency accommodation and support to women and their children fleeing domestic abuse.

Twenty members of our Customer Service Team helped to clock up an impressive 829 kilometres for our West Midlands to West Indies Challenge this summer. The challenge encouraged colleagues to take some time out throughout our Wellbeing Month to get active.

The team was awarded £30 per person to spend on an activity of their choice, and they all decided to donate the money to Gilgal.

Our Customer Services Team Leader Indy Phull said: “It was such a pleasure to visit Gilgal last week with some of my colleagues to see the great work they do first-hand.

“Donating our winnings to them was a team decision. We all wanted to donate the money go to a good cause, to someone who could really benefit from it.

“The coronavirus pandemic has had a massive impact on charities, and we all know from reports and statistics that domestic violence has increased during this period too. This is why we chose Gilgal as our charity, we felt it was appropriate to donate to a local source of support and refuge for women.”

Lorraine Hawker, Operations Manager at Gilgal in Birmingham, said: “Thank you so much to Indy and the team at Citizen for this very generous donation.

“After suffering a significant cut to our funding in December 2019, we have been on a mission to bridge the gap and keep the refuge open.

“Unfortunately, the coronavirus pandemic has kept people inside their homes a lot more than usual and we’re desperate to make sure we remain open to support the women and children who may have to flee their homes to escape domestic abuse.

“No one should be locked in with their abuser. We’re doing all we can to raise funds and drive efficiencies and when companies like Citizen call us up with a donation it really does make our day!

“Thank you so much from me and all the families lives you are helping to save.”

Anne, who currently lives at Gilgal with her children, added: “I can’t thank Citizen and Gilgal enough for their support.

“When I didn’t know what to do, or how to get out of the horrible life that I lived, Gilgal welcomed me and my family with open arms and showed us that we deserved to live a normal life.

“Without Gilgal I would not have succeeded. Thanks to generous donations like the one Gilgal has received from Citizen they continue to help as many women and children as possible.”

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