Romans Group
Romans has made Help for Heroes its nominated charity for 2010/2011. Founded in 1987, Romans is a multi-disciplinary property group with 16 branches across Berkshire, North Hampshire and Surrey, offering a range of property services including sales, lettings, financial advice, surveying, auctions, architectural design, land development, new homes marketing and town planning.
Romans' support for Help for Heroes originated at their Aldershot branch. The town's military background made the charity a natural choice, especially as Lettings Manager Richard O'Neill had spent 14 years in the Parachute Regiment before joining the property industry. But the rest of Romans' branches were soon swept along by the fundraising enthusiasm too, resulting in a schedule of events across all the whole company - designed to both generate funds and to increase public awareness of the work carried out by Help for Heroes.
Sponsored Walk
Fired up with fundraising enthusiasm, 13 members of staff from three branches of Romans Lettings undertook a four-hour sponsored walk from their Wokingham branch at Market Place to their Bracknell office on Broadway, Bracknell, before heading south and arriving at their branch on the London Road in Camberley – a distance of approximately 11 miles.
Although the final figures are not yet in, the intrepid team are delighted that they have so far collected almost £1,500 in sponsorship money – and that total looks set to rise.
Sponsored Relay Exercise Bike Ride
Over £6,000 has been raised by Romans so far, with events such as the Reading branch of Romans Lettings taking part in a sponsored relay exercise bike ride in a local gym, over a two day period. Each person cycled a two hour session on both days, with the target of covering the distance from Lands End to John O' Groats – that’s 837 miles!
Scheduled future events include a raft race, a canoe challenge and a sponsored walk along Roman Walls in Silchester with staff dressed as Roman soldiers. Four of the Group's directors have thrown themselves into the fundraising mix too, by volunteering to take part in The Grim in December 2010 – an eight mile off road challenge held at the Army's vehicle testing tracks in Aldershot, where they’ll be running, crawling and wading through some rough terrain.