Story by Shuna Beckett
Photo by Anwar Suliman
Rachel Liszka, Community Champion at the Tesco Extra Superstore on Spital Hill, has got something most of us want in life: a job she enjoys. And not only does she love the job she’s been doing for four years, but she helps people in the community at the same time.
Tesco has been giving back to the community in a number of ways through the Community Champion scheme, from offering donations and vouchers for raffles, to operating personal hygiene collections for the homeless, to running food bank collections for Carlisle Street (Tesco’s collected enough food for eight million meals last year, nationally). And its Rachel’s job to organise all this.
Her enthusiasm for the job is infectious. “I absolutely love it”, she says. “I get to meet so many lovely people. It’s beautiful.” She goes out of her way to get involved in the community and does a lot in her own time, such as judging cake competitions at Pitsmoor Adventure Playground. She says that the Store Manager, Tony Hutchings, is very supportive of the local community and gives her a lot of freedom within her role.
Other schemes that the Store runs include ‘Farm to Fork’, where they invite children and adults in to teach them where their food comes from; volunteer bag packing who raise funds for their own causes (Royal Victoria volunteers have raised thousands for the Children’s Hospital); fire safety awareness; and toy collections. Rachel won a Burngreave New Year’s Honours Award for her services to the Burngreave community.