Sheffield charities' Master Cutler boost

Sheffield charities are £114,000 better off thanks to the 2014 Master Cutlers Challenge, sponsored by Sheffield Forgemasters.

Ninety teams from across the Sheffield City Region signed up for the 2014 Master Cutler’s Challenge to turn £100, the largest amount ever available for contestants, into bigger piles of cash for Whirlow Hall Farm Trust and Sheffield Hospitals Charity supporting the Jessop Wing neonatal intensive care and maternity hospital and a host of smaller local charities.

Former 2013-14 Master Cutler Tony Pedder met representatives from the charities including Louisa Harrison-Walker, trustee from Whirlow Hall Farm Trust and David Reynolds, director, and Phil Taylor, chair of trustees at the Sheffield Hospitals Charity at the Cutlers Hall in Sheffield.

The money was collected through more than 200 innovative fundraising initiatives led by companies from one man bands to schools and large city corporates. Sheffield Forgemasters sponsored the initiative.

Fundraising events ranged from leg waxing to film-making, mock tribunals to sock monkeys, clairvoyancy to hitch-hiking and horse grooming to swimming the equivalent of the English Channel.

The largest fundraising donation came from Sheffield legal firm DLA Piper which raised £7,106.57 through its now annual life-size city Monopoly game, cake bake and dodge ball match.

The Master Cutler’s Challenge is now one of the largest annual fundraising events in the region. Since it started in 2008, the challenge has inspired more than 500 companies to raise more than £500,000 for local good causes.

Pic caption: Fantastic fundraisers...The outgoing Master Cutler Tony Pedder(front row), the current Master Cutler David Grey (centre front row), members of the the Cutler’s Company, staff and trustees from Sheffield Hospitals Charity and Whirlow Hall Farm Trust, and staff from Whirlow Hall Farm and the Jessop Wing.