World Duty Free wins Glenfiddich charity auction with £42,000 bid

Last evening I attended, with Sarah Branquinho, Chair of the Trustees of the Lotus Flower Trust, Erik Juul-Mortensen and Dr Ann Hunt, both Trustees, the Mall Galleries, the Mall, London as guests of Wm Grant & Sons. At a ceremony unveiling a portrait of an amazing lady, Mrs Janet Sheed Roberts, Lotus Flower Trust was the recipient of a most generous cheque.

To celebrate the life and work of the late Mrs Janet Sheed Roberts who was the Granddaughter of William Grant and who lived to 110yrs, Wm Grant & Sons produced 11 very special bottles of 55 year old whisky, each bottle representing a decade of Mrs Roberts’ life, all of which are being auctioned to raise funds for charity.

Bottle No 7 was allocated to Wm Grant & Sons international duty free division, headed by Rita Greenwood, who is part of a networking group within the duty free industry – ‘Women in Travel’ who had chosen Lotus Flower Trust as their focus for fundraising last year, and had raised nearly £12k towards the building of a School and Home for physically and mentally challenged children in Ramnagar, India.

The top bid at auction came from World Duty Free Group who bid an amazing £42,000 and presented a cheque to Lotus Flower Trust.

This sum, together with the money already raised by ‘Women in Travel’, will allow Lotus Flower Trust to complete the building of the School for 100 Disabled Children close to Ramnagar, Uttrakhand State in India. The remainder of the funds will allow us to start building the Home for the children and will, we all hope, act as a catalyst to raise the rest of the £17,000 funds that the Trust needs to complete the Home.

We are very grateful to Wm Grant & Sons, to Women in Travel and to the World Duty Free Group for their extraordinary generosity. To have a school and home for disabled children is a landmark in the State of Uttrakhand where there are no such schools or homes at all for children who are physically or mentally challenged. The school will be opened in November of this year and, hopefully, the home will follow shortly – funds allowing.

John Hunt CEO and Founder