As the climate crisis accelerates and world leaders meet at the COP26 Summit in Glasgow, Tearfund has launched their ‘A Gift for your Neighbour’ campaign, partnering with SPAR, EUROSPAR and ViVO stores in Northern Ireland to help push vital funds towards the communities living in poverty around the world, and feeling the effects of Covid, conflict and climate change acutely.

SPAR, EUROSPAR and ViVO will match donations made in-store or online, up to £200,000 from 01 November until 31 December 2021.

Bronagh Luke, Head of Corporate Marketing at Henderson Group met with Tearfund’s Northern Ireland Director, Glen Mitchell to discuss how important the annual partnership is to communities around the world, especially in the face of various global emergencies.

Bronagh commented; “It could be easy to forget the different ways that the climate crisis impacts different communities around the world, however campaigns like this help us further understand the importance of reaching across the world and helping our global neighbours.

“Our shoppers have always been incredibly generous during our festive campaigns, and matching their donations will help reach communities who are facing these very real effects of global warming even further.”

The appeal aims to help support communities like those on the coast of the Bay of Bengal, where families like Juliet’s are already living in poverty, and now the climate crisis is making things even worse for them. Juliet’s family relies mostly on fishing and on growing crops like rice to survive, but now that there is an ever increasing number of floods and extreme cyclones, it makes life very dangerous and it’s difficult to keep finding the money to rebuild houses and replace belongings that get washed away.

Glen Mitchell, NI Director at Tearfund added; “We are so grateful to the generous staff and shoppers of SPAR, EUROSPAR, ViVO and ViVOXTRA who, again this year, are helping some of the people who live in greatest need around the world. The money we raise this year through ‘A Gift for Your Neighbour’ will go towards helping people like Juliet around the world.

“Tearfund’s partner in the Bay of Bengal has been able to help Juliet’s community find ways to stay safe when flooding comes, and also come up with different ways to earn more income to help them lift themselves out of poverty. Thank you for being a part of helping people like Juliet and her family!”

A Gift for Your Neighbour is now live, with donation boxes in SPAR, EUROSPAR, ViVO and ViVOXTRA stores throughout Northern Ireland, running until 31 December 2021.

Shoppers can also donate online and find out more via tearfund.org/SPAR.