WE WERE FINALISTS IN THE 2024 BE PROUD AWARDS!
Back in January, we received a very exciting email telling us that we’d been selected as a finalist in the prestigious Be Proud Awards.
A Manchester City Council initiative, the Be Proud Awards celebrate the wide range of people who are doing great things in the communities of Greater Manchester; the unsung heroes who invest their heart and soul into projects and programmes that improve their local neighbourhoods and communities.
The Awards are designed to celebrate these wonderful humans across nine different categories, which are:
Taking Neighbourhood Climate Action
Helping to Tackle Poverty
Increasing Skills and Employment Choices
Creating Safer Neighbourhoods
Supporting Health and Wellbeing
Promoting Equality and Diversity
Creating Greener and Cleaner Neighbourhoods
Creativity in Neighbourhoods
Business in the Community
We were nominated in the Business in the Community category, which identifies commercial organisations that are placing purpose high on their agenda by investing time, skills and resources into their local areas, and often beyond.
When we received that email, completely out of the blue, at the back end of January we were absolutely blown away. Beyond excited! To be recognised for the hard graft we’ve been investing into Lentils and Lather since 2019 is an amazing feeling.
Carl Peachey, who founded Lentils and Lather with his partner Paulina, said: “A few months prior to establishing our business I read a book called Let My People Go Surfing by Yvon Chouinard, founder of the well-known clothing brand Patagonia. As some of you may know, Patagonia is renowned for producing top-tier clothing, but also placing sustainability at the centre of the business - they are heavily invested in the outdoors after all. But what inspired us the most was their overall ethics towards the people they’re surrounded by: the way they treated their staff, invested in local projects and had the ambition to operate so differently to similar brands”.
This was an inspirational read that helped us to define the ethos of Lentils and Lather: Sustainable shopping, less plastic, better world! Sustainability and reducing plastic are front and centre in our business, but so is doing good things in the communities in which we live and operate.
We provide paid work to Dan, who has Down’s Syndrome, we support organisations that help people without homes (Invisible Cities and Cornerstone Centre), we facilitate local litter picks, we have contributed to the Cherry Tree Project food bank, have raised money for victims of flooding in Pakistan and so much more.
We didn’t manage to scoop the overall award for Business in the Community, but being recognised, nominated and shortlisted was a huge achievement in its own right - something that we’re immensely proud of.
Sharing our table with fellow local nominees Purpose Coffee Co, who are based in Withington Baths, was a brilliant laugh (the kind of fun that makes you fall off your chair), and congratulations to Alexandra Park Pavillion for taking the overall top spot for their amazing community hub.
It was amazing to hear stories about the other nominees too, there truly are some brilliant people in Greater Manchester doing excellent things!
