Bromyard Gala CommuniTea event, June 30th.

The Bromyard Gala in Herefordshire is a prominent event in the county, attracting around 2,000 visitors on the day. Herefordshire is one of four counties that make up our West Mercia area, and it was chosen as one of several "CommuniTea" events taking place this summer.
 
At our stand our committee members shared freebies, website details, answered queries and shared stories.

Joy Muir, our committee secretary, arranged for our stand - situated near the entrance and within the area incorporating bees (with bee colonies and honey) and the donkeys from a local sanctuary.

This location meant our Crimestoppers stand attracted a lot of attention, with a large proportion of children and young people congregating in the area.
 

Andrea Accison, our Fearless Outreach Worker, engaged with many young people and distributed Fearless information, cards and freebies. Andrea also spoke with teachers and community workers and many other members of the public who visited the stand.
 

Some of the people we met included

• A sexual assault survivor who shared her story with us and recommended that personal wrist alarms might be a good freebie to give out, and who expressed an interest in being a contact or ambassador for the committee.
• A “historical re-enactor organiser” in costume visited from a nearby stand and offered a free pitch to us for the Spetchley Gardens, Worcester,  Living History event on 11th and 12th August. The re-enactors have a large network of organisations and sometimes promote chosen charities to showcase their work to the re-enactors’ networks. They have expressed an interest in working in partnership in some way, which we are following up on.
• Foster carers, who shared experiences and were interested in our website.
• People who requested posters for their work places and a woman who was very conversant with Crimestoppers as her daughter was a police officer and had spoken about us.
• A visit from a Canadian Timber Wolf and owner who requested CS information - although he added that the wolf was also quite a good crime deterrent!
• We spent a lot of time explaining that Crimestoppers is an independent charity and not the police.
• The members of the public we spoke to considered taking Fearless into schools as a positive action.
• We had some donations in our collecting tin.
• A paramedic and his two daughters had a lengthy conversation regarding domestic abuse, FGM and pet abuse, and the merits of anonymous reporting.
• A woman who told us that her son had run the London Marathon for Crimestoppers and then gave us a donation.
• Herefordshire is a mostly rural county and rural crime was a popular topic. Our committee ran a PCC-funded rural crime campaign in 2015, “Scene It, Herd It”, which was very successful and which generated 57 calls, and requests for a similar future campaign were expressed.

All in all, a very worthwhile and fun day.
   

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