THERE was plenty of interest when a staff team from MBNA in Chester took part in fundraising activities to boost an Ellesmere Port charity.

The staff team from the chief operations office of the bank, based at Chester Business Park on Herons Way, took part in the ‘Chapter Challenge’.

This involves Chapter providing a £50 budget that is then spent on fundraising activities.

MBNA split into three teams of five, who competed with each other to win half a day of holiday.

Team 2 was triumphant, raising £445 from a silent auction and a coin swap scheme.

Julie-Anne Williams led the coin swap, which involved putting a 10p piece inside a pouch with a message about mental health inside. The pouch was then ‘swapped’ for £1.

This scheme caught the imagination and raised an amazing £300, with £145 raised in the silent auction.

Team 3 came second with the sales of bespoke food plans from fitness expert Matt Arnott, raising £150, while Neil Elson’s Team 1 carried out a bucket collection in Chester city centre and raised £125.

Collectively a total of £720 was raised for Chapter, MBNA’s COO department’s chosen charity of the year. So far the department has raised more than £7,000 for the Ellesmere Port-based mental health charity.

Chapter’s fundraiser Matt Zeqiri said: “MBNA’s staff used their imaginations, passions, and old-fashioned common sense to come up with these brilliant fundraising ideas. To raise £720 in a matter of days is a fantastic achievement.

“It certainly helps that they’re all competitive people who wanted to beat each other!”

MBNA’s Sarah Coupland, who oversaw the competition, said: “All the teams were really motivated by the task and the competitive edge really came out between the teams wanting to raise as much as they could for our local charity Chapter.

“It was great fun seeing all the teams working so well together and coming up with very creative ideas. The Chapter Challenge is a great way of teams working collaboratively together and making a real difference locally.”

Chapter provides one-to-ones, group activities, training and voluntary placements to people living with severe mental illness in Cheshire West and Chester.

  • Any groups interested in taking part in the Chapter Challenge should visit Chapter’s website at www.chapterwestcheshire.org.