For those of you who celebrate Easter, this year was undoubtedly very different from the norm. With restaurants closed and social gatherings banned, most families and friends had to rely on apps such as Zoom in order to virtually come together and still try and make the most of a very surreal situation. One person in particular who had an unusual bank holiday was our Facilities Manager Gary Riehl, who found himself heading into WL’s Head Office on Easter Sunday in order to print some sewing patterns for scrubs urgently needed by the NHS.
On the evening of Saturday 11th, Elizabeth Price sent out a plea to Twitter asking if there were any A0 printers available in the South London area. These would be used to print very particular sewing patterns that could then be used to create scrubs. Elizabeth was making the request on behalf of several local hospitals, including King’s College, Royal Brompton and St Christopher’s Hospice. Perhaps unsurprisingly, upon seeing the Tweet, a lot of our followers began tagging us. Wanting to see just how we could help, we reached out to Elizabeth who informed us they needed 20 sheets printing on A0, which would contain two different patterns. Not only that but these would need printing ASAP due to the fact that they were urgently needed… As such, we began liaising with our Facilities Manager, Gary Riehl, who informed us that we did in fact have the printers capable of printing the sheets. Realising the urgency of the situation, Gary stepped forward and kindly volunteered to head into the office and print out whatever Elizabeth required; giving up his Easter Sunday in the process.
Once Gary arrived at our South Wimbledon base, Elizabeth emailed over the sewing patterns which he was able to immediately print. He then called Elizabeth who was able to arrange a safe, socially-distanced collection and by 6pm the roll of patterns were ready to be distributed to the team of scrub makers.
Rolls of Printed Patterns
So whilst it was a very different Easter Sunday for WL this year, we’re proud to say this was for a very good reason. We’d like to say a big thank you to Gary for all of his help and for embodying practically all of our core values when assisting Elizabeth and her team.
The handing over of the patterns
To learn more about scrub hubs and the ‘For Love of Scrubs’ Facebook groups which started the movement you can read this piece by Jessica Murray: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/13/volunteers-stitch-together-make-scrubs-for-nhs
Thanks to Haydn Davison, our Operations Manager, the transport team has also been busy delivering meals to NHS frontline staff. This was a joint initiative with restaurant chain Corbin & King and our fleet of WL have been making deliveries to two hospitals in London. This is something we hope to continue doing over the next few weeks.
The nation has seen several wonderful initiatives designed to show gratitude towards the NHS, including the ongoing #ClapForOurCarers campaign. Last week, the Merton Chamber of Commerce put us in touch with our neighbours at Merton Council and we were delighted to support their participation in #LightItUpBlue by donating blue light filters to help transform the Civic Centre in Morden. Please enjoy some pictures below of the end result.
From all of us at WL, we hope you are keeping well – take care.
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