'Help Your Britain' Campaign Showcases ScrapstoresUK on the Bing Homepage
Friday, 24 February 2012 00:31
BING CONTINUES CHARITY CAMPAIGN WITH FIRST USER-NOMINATED HOMEPAGE
Continuing its Help Your Britain campaign, Microsoft’s search engine, Bing.com, is today handing over its daily homepage to ScrapstoresUK, enabling the resourceful charity to tell its story to Bing’s 13 million users. To mark the occasion, Bing is running an exclusive image that celebrates ScrapstoresUK’s work, as well as providing in-depth information about the charity and the work it does.
ScrapstoresUK’s curation of the Bing homepage marks the first user-nominated charity to be showcased on Bing, with a different charity appearing on the homepage on the final Friday each month. The charity supports the reuse of unwanted scrap materials, enabling around 80,000 community groups to source high quality art and craft materials for little or no cost, through a network of 88 independent ‘scrapstores’ throughout the UK.
Saving 10.5 million kilos of clean commercial and manufacturing industry waste from landfill per year, ScrapstoresUK not only teaches communities about environmental sustainability, but also provides children with otherwise unattainable materials to spark creativity and improve communication, problem solving and team working skills.
Hot spots on the homepage will provide users with additional information about the challenges that ScrapstoresUK seeks to tackle through its work. Users can also watch an in-depth video, featuring members of the ScrapstoresUK team, to find out more information about the charity, including details of how they can make a donation, by visiting Bing’s Help Your Britain page.
Paul Nott, Vice Chairman, ScrapstoresUK, commented “Scrapstores have been the UK’s best kept secret for over 30 years. This partnership with our friends at Bing will allow even more children to access the amazing selection of play and craft materials offered by their local scrapstore and will show businesses how to reuse their waste in a way that benefits their community and reduces their carbon footprint.”
Peter Maxmin from Bing says: “Following the launch of Bing’s Help Your Britain campaign, we’ve received a phenomenal level of interest from users. We’ve been overwhelmed by the huge array of local charities and causes that people have nominated for the campaign, all of which are making incredibly valuable contributions to communities across Britain.
“As our first ever user-nominated charity, ScrapstoresUK does a fantastic job, not only by providing a staggering 6.1 million children with scrap resources to get creative with, but by also providing local artists and community groups with surplus materials that they can put to good use. All of this is achieved whilst helping to vastly reduce the levels of waste going into landfills across the country every year.
“There are more than 187,000 registered charities across Great Britain with a story to be told, many of which will never be heard due to the lack of resources at their disposal. Bing is shining the spotlight on these unsung British heroes, enabling the British public to nominate the charities they would like to see featured on the homepage via www.bing.com/HelpYourBritain.”