OREANDA-NEWS. Health conscious staff from SSE’s Ferrybridge Power Station used a company ‘get fit’ scheme to secure donations for two local charities.

SSE was proud to be a sponsor of the Glasgow 2014 Commonwealth Games and to help its staff get energised and fit it ran the ‘Commonwealth Challenge – walk around the world for SSE’.

To walk around the world in just five weeks, while also maintaining day jobs, would be near enough impossible, so the challenge was divided up with each team of ten walking 5% of the distance around the world, averaging 10,000 steps per person per day. This meant that at least 20 teams were needed to make sure SSE ‘walked around the world'!

To help keep track of their walking, staff were provided with free pedometers which recorded their progress.  At the end of each week teams logged the number of steps they had completed on the company’s website.

Not only did this challenge support teamwork and help staff get fit and active, it also came with the additional incentive to win donations to charity by ‘reaching’ designated destinations across the world.

Ferrybridge ‘C’ Power Station’s Team Awesomewere, one of the first teams to complete the Canberra to Georgetown leg of the trek, won a fantastic ?1,500 to donate to a charity of their choice. Team members, Natalie Wraith, Robert Thompson, Mick Cooney, Cheryl Hook, Mick Coulson, Terry Clarkson, Jonathan Lowery, Kyle Mcgillivray, John Chamberlain and Paul Mattison chose to donate the money to Yorkshire Air Ambulance and Candlelighters.  Team Leader Natalie Wraith said:

"Yorkshire Air Ambulance and Candlelighters are charities very close the hearts of staff at Ferrybridge.  Knowing that we had the opportunity to give something back to our local communities made us all push that little bit harder and we completed an incredible 2,752,795 steps over the five week period – going to prove that we really were Team Awesome!”