In the midst of the Beast from the East last week, Industrial Inkjet has held out its hand to the less fortunate, who were caught in the snow.

Sunday Supper, a local charity, reached out for assistance to provide more help for those that needed it. IIJ donated warm clothing, personal care essentials, thermal bags, and food to the charity.

The IIJ team, led by managing director John Corrall, wrote up a long list of supplies, before going to a nearby supermarket and loading up three trollies full of goods for Sunday Supper.

As a community-founded group based in Mildenhall, the charity relies on donations to help the homeless in Bury St Edmunds and surrounding areas. The organisation focuses on providing warmer sleeping bags, essentials, and food, as well as friendship. Throughout the snowy week, representatives from the charity went out in the evenings to hand out donations to the homeless. On certain days of the week, the charity offers hot meals and lunches to those sleeping rough, and IIJ also contributed to food for the hot meals.

 Sarah Collard, marketing and communications specialist at IIJ, explains: “Our colleague volunteers for the charity and she sent out an email asking if anybody has anything they can donate—clothes or sleeping bags or anything they didn’t need anymore, please let her know. With Storm Emma and The Beast from the East coming, it’s going to be really, really cold.

“John, without hesitation, just responded with ‘right, what do you need?’ and then on the Wednesday, he went on Amazon and ordered tents, thick sleeping bags, and then on the Thursday said, ‘I want to do even more because it’s so cold’.”

It led to an IIJ team heading to the local supermarket, and Corrall and the group bought more tents and sleeping bags, and Collard explains that the supermarket even closed down an aisle to let the team do a ‘supermarket sweep’ style run to fill the trollies.

Whilst no stranger to raising money for charity, Collard says that it has given IIJ more of an incentive to support charities that really need it. She adds: “We did everything we could for that charity and I think that’s how we will continue to go forward.”