The local Salvation Army church and community centre offers a range of activities and services within the local community. Local residents can become involved through volunteering with fundraising initiatives, attending church services and helping with local activities. The Salvation Army also supports the work of the local emergency services by providing refreshments, shelter and counselling at major incidents.

Majors Ian & Christine Kennedy are the corps officers of Farnworth Salvation Army; Ian says: ‘ready steady store in Worsley has been absolutely fabulous looking after The Salvation Army’s local interests with care and professionalism, and by offering both help and advice. The facilities are superb; clean, fresh and very well organised. The manager, Jamie and the staff are to be commended.’

The work carried out by Farnworth Salvation Army is invaluable to the local community and is something we fully support at ready steady store. It has been very rewarding working with the organisation and we look forward to developing our relationship by supporting the charity at future events.

The Salvation Army is one of the largest, most diverse providers of social services in the UK after the Government. Founded in East London in 1865, it is now working in 118 countries worldwide. There are over 1.6million members, with programmes including homeless centres, drug rehabilitation centres, schools, hospitals and medical centres as well as nearly 16,000 church and community centres. The work of The Salvation Army is funded through donations from its members, the general public and, where appropriate, local authority and government grants.

The players currently compete in tournaments in the Yorkshire area, both individually and in teams. The squad has recently added extra tournament training sessions to its training regime, in an attempt to achieve its goals for 2010. Some of the players’ recent achievements include Charlie Johnson snatching first place at the Ilkley Christmas U14 boys match play and Lucy Stead topping the leader board at the U12 Girls in Hull at Christmas.

This year there has already been two triumphs for the squad. Jacob Dunworth won the U12 boys at Graves Tennis Centre in February and Emily Gibson took first place at the U14 tournament in Graves, Sheffield on 14 February 2010.

Dawn Wong, junior chairman, says:  ‘It is refreshing to be supported by a local business that is looking to work with the Leeds community. The new t-shirts are a great way to kick off the upcoming season. It is a very exciting time for our junior section; we are striving for the highest standards with a host of new initiatives and hope our top class facilities will assist the squads in fulfilling their potential. The club, coaches and squads would like to thank ready steady store for all its support’.

We are pleased to support Chapel Allerton Lawn Tennis & Squash Club, by donating new t-shirts for its performance junior tennis and squash squads. All of us at ready steady store wish the squads all the best for the remainder of the season. As a company, we actively support local sports initiatives within the Leeds community.

Support our Soldiers was set up six years ago to send parcels out to British Troops fighting in Iraq. The group received official charity status in 2007 and has expanded to cover military personnel serving in Afghanistan. SOS also provides counselling to relatives, which is run exclusively by volunteers.

SOS is often overwhelmed by the numbers who volunteer to support the servicemen and women in the war zones and to this end get involved in its shoebox collection. The boxes are filled with morale boosting items, from sweets and snacks to toiletries and essentials, bringing forward memories of home.  SOS sent out almost 12,000 parcels to British Armed Forces serving overseas last Christmas and hope to continue these efforts throughout the year.

Sharron Thomas from Support our Soldiers, says: ‘ready steady store in Worsley has been tremendous, looking after Support our Soldiers local interests with care and professionalism, and by offering both help and advice. The facilities are superb; clean, fresh and very well organised and the staff are to be commended.’

The work carried out by Support our Soldiers is invaluable to the local community and is something we fully support at ready steady store. It has been very rewarding working with the organisation and we look forward to developing our relationship by supporting the charity at future events.

Anybody wishing to help can contact Sharron at sharron@supportoursoldiers.co.uk for further information. Those wishing to donate do not have to commit to filling a whole shoebox – any items from the suggested list provided by SOS are greatly appreciated.

Boothstown Football Club is a thriving and hugely successful football club located in Boothstown, Salford. It is an accredited FA Charter Standard Development Club and in 2008 was awarded the much coveted Development Award from Manchester FA. The club runs teams from under 6s to under 16s, who play in varying local leagues, and the club is currently in the process of developing a girl’s team in readiness for the 2009 to 2010 season.

We are pleased to support Boothstown Youth Football Club, by donating a new kit to its under 7 youth team and wish them all the best for the upcoming season. As a company, we actively support local sports initiatives within the Manchester community.

Doncaster Deaf Trust’s mission is to develop high quality, innovative and collaborative provision in a financially efficient environment, which empowers deaf pupils to live a productive and independent life.

People changed their holidaying habits this year, with almost 30 per cent stating that they took fewer holidays in general. Around 20 per cent indicated they saved for one long trip, while a further 20 per cent prefer shorter breaks and less long holidays.

Despite the recession, families understand the importance of taking their holidays. They are simply changing the way they take a break. Many holidaymakers get excited at the prospect of staying closer to home, preferring to explore the delights on their doorstep, which is great news for the local economy.

The event was held at Wellington Country Park on Friday, 24th July and Saturday, 25th July and festival goers partied in the sunshine, enjoying groups including ‘Fabba’, ‘Retake That’, the Queen Tribute band, the Motown Show and T-Rexstasy.  For the first time in the festival’s history, the Saturday event sold out completely as Berkshire families flocked to enjoy the music and children’s activities in the beautiful surroundings of the park.

The ADCCT fundraising activity pulled together volunteers from all over the county – the fantastic Wokingham Lions group manned the car parks and organised collections amongst the crowd with volunteers from Maidenhead and Windsor running a pocket money toys stall. Local self storage company, ready steady store, based on Molly Millars Lane in Wokingham teamed up with ADCCT and ran the very popular ‘Hook a Duck’ game. Children paid 50p to hook a prize and the successful game raised an incredible £264 for ADCCT.

ready steady store Manchester Central has dedicated two storage rooms to The Fed.  Please contact The FED on 0161 795 0024 if you would like to donate your unwanted furniture at ready steady store (must be of good quality, resellable and meet British Safety Standards). Once we have filled the store we will open the rooms as an extension of The Fed’s charity shop. An easy way to help a good cause!

This weekend, we also helped The Fed organise their annual sponsored toddle. Children from the local community were invited down to race in aid of The Fed. We ran our own guess how many stress balls in the box competition and an ipod shuffle is on it’s way to the lucky winner – congratulations Abby Greenhouse who was just one off the correct number of 80!

If you are looking for other ways to help The Fed, ready steady store will donate £50 to The Fed if you store at ready steady store in Manchester.

Stay tuned for details of our next event with The Fed!

The event will run between 8 June and 27 June, so come down to one of our stores, step for charity on one of our in store cross trainers and help conquer Everest! Strap on your gym shoes and make your contribution to the target of 44,800 steps – enough to take us to the Everest Summit!

For each person who steps up to the challenge and completes a 10 minute stepping session, ready steady store will donate £5 to the chosen local charity. Every stepper will also automatically enter a prize draw to win a hot air balloon ride. Any additional sponsorship from the public is welcome.

National Carers week runs from Monday 8 – Sunday 14 June 2009. It is a time for carers to speak out. Six million carers throughout the UK provide unpaid care for friends, family and loved ones saving the economy a whopping £87 billion each year. Carers Week is a time to recognise the efforts and contribution these people make to our community.

Looking forward to seeing you get sweaty in store!

We will be posting daily updates on the progress of our events and news. Follow us on selfstorageUK