Charity award for Tesco ‘twins’ for Peace Bridge Cha Cha Slide

This time the Community Champion and her Tesco counterpart, Selina Fitzpatrick, the better customer manager at Lisnagelvin Tesco, were in London on Thursday at a gala event in the Mariot Hotel on Grosvensor Square. There they collected the award in the Diabetes UK Community Awards, namely the ‘Best Community Involvement Event’ for a Cha Cha Slide in January on the Peace Bridge.

The Cha Cha Slide took place on January 22 amid high winds and torrential rain. Despite the inclement weather, the ladies were overjoyed when almost 200 members of the public turned out to dance and sing in the rain, raising a substantial four-figure sum for Diabetes UK.

“I am over the moon,” said an elated Irene.

“When we saw the competition in London we just said ‘no way’. We were up against a community fun day and a winter wonderland, so we really could not believe it when we won.

“Dominic Littlewood made the announcement and he helped me up the stairs and him and me twirled around on stage. It was a great night. The dinner was amazing and there was entertainment afterwards with singers and dancers and a DJ until 1am. It was great, but I am going back to work for a rest,” she joked.

Employed as Tesco’s Community Champion at Strand Road, Irene is delighted that so far the supermarket chair has already raised in excess of the £10m target for Diabetes UK through customer interaction.

“So far this year £11.500,000 has been raised. It is really beneficial for the community to do things like this and the people from Diabetes UK will be able to improve so many lives and their work will also help the Health Service as people will not be a burden as Disbetes UK will have a vaccine. To me that is a life-changing statement to be able to make, especially when you look at the number of people who have Diabetes and don’t even know it,” she said.