Last Thursday saw Leonie Plasman, Flowers and Plants category manager at Hoogvliet, hand over a cheque for €4,762 to Nationale Vereniging de Zonnebloem. From 13 May, special Sunsation® Sunflower pot sunflowers were on sale in 67 Hoogvliet stores, with €1 from every plant sold going to De Zonnebloem. The campaign ran for two weeks.

Helmi Speijkers, Marketing and Communication manager at De Zonnebloem: “Our Zonnebloem volunteers run all kinds of activities that help prevent people with a physical disability becoming socially isolated. And while Covid restrictions are being lifted in the Netherlands from next week, our vulnerable group are still stuck at home. So our thanks go to Hoogvliet for this campaign and to everyone who bought the special sunflowers, because this donation enables our volunteers to develop heart-warming activities that will keep people with a physical disability connected to society.”

Heart-warming

Leonie Plasman, Flowers and Plants category manager at Hoogvliet: “It’s wonderful that our customers were able to bring a little sunshine into their own and other people’s lives with a beautiful pot sunflower and at the same time make a direct contribution to the important work being done by De Zonnebloem. For Hoogvliet and for our colleagues at all our supermarkets, it was a pleasure to be involved in this. It is heart-warming to see how committed and grateful De Zonnebloem is.”

The handover took place at Hoogvliet Houten in the presence of the board of the De Zonnebloem Houten branch, who had come to express their gratitude. Truus Wieman, board member for visitor services: “The coronavirus crisis has meant that we aren’t able to visit our service users, so we are constantly on the lookout for other ways to keep in touch with them.”

Great partnership

It was a great partnership between Sunsation® Sunflower, Hoogvliet and De Zonnebloem. Louis Kester of the Sunsation growers’ collective: “The De Zonnebloem volunteers are people who are dedicated to ensuring that everyone can enjoy life to the full. Our Sunsation® pot sunflowers bring joy and sunshine into people’s homes or gardens, even when things might otherwise not be going too well. Our growers want to contribute to that – with Sunshine Every Day!”