"Sarah would have loved this"

Tuesday 24 December 2019

A number of bikes have been gifted to deserving children this Christmas thanks to an ongoing partnership between the Sarah Groves Foundation and other local organisations.

The Foundation has worked with Ian Brown's Cycle Shop and social services as well as charities Homestart and Safer to identify those who would benefit from the bikes, which have been given to their families ready to be unwrapped in the morning.

It's the fourth year in a row the Foundation has donated bikes in memory of Sarah Groves, the young Guernseywoman murdered in Kashmir in 2013.

This year 27 bikes have been donated, taking the number gifted in total to more than 100 over the four years.

Pictured: Kate and Vic Groves with representatives of social services, Safer and Homestart. 

The Trustees of the Foundation, which include Sarah's parents Vic and Kate, say they "totally rely on the agencies concerned to specify the age and size of intended recipients". 

Vic Groves said: "it's also in conjunction with Ian Brown's cycles of course, and we, Kate in particularly, leases with the agencies and establishes a number of deserving situations and fundamentally all that preparation work is done and this year it's ended up as 27 bikes and our motto is 'enhancing young lives' and this does."

Kate Groves said it fits in perfectly with their work to preserve their daughter's memory.

"It's definitely something that Sarah would absolutely love, and I always carry her in my heart and everything that we do, I take back to whether she would want it or not, and as I say, my goodness I think she'd want us to give a hundred bikes."

Pictured: The new children's library is now open thanks to the Sarah Groves Foundation, and is proving very popular with young readers. 

The Sarah Groves Foundation has been involved in a number of charitable endeavours in the island over recent years. Notably it granted funds towards the redevelopment of the children's fasciities at the Guille Alles Library.

Vic said they want to do more work like that.

"That's the kind of project that we're interested in. We've got a couple of ideas running but they're taking a long time to come through. The money is there and we can do it."

Kate continued: "That's the thing, we need to reign ourselves in with something like this because if we do everything we want to do then the money won't be available for more lasting projects like the library. We have a couple of ideas in the winds, so we hope that at least one will materialise."