Magnificent readers sent £1m in cheques as £10.8m Mail Force campaign helps children keep learning

Almost £1million in cheques from generous readers has now been banked by the Mail Force charity – with every penny helping get schoolchildren online.

An incredible 15,800 cheques have been received, many of which come with heartwarming letters of support for the campaign which aims to bridge the ‘digital divide’.

Hundreds of thousands of pupils have fallen behind because they did not have access to a laptop or tablet during lockdown. 

The Mail’s Computers for Kids campaign is handing over tens of thousands of laptops and 150,000 free Vodafone data cards to help disadvantaged youngsters catch up, which could take them months.

As well as £950,000 in cheques, our readers have sent in £880,000 in donations online and via phone and text messages. Along with philanthropists and companies, the total raised is now £10.8million.

Among those sending money to the cause was retired GP Peta Croucher, 59, who wrote a cheque for £250. 

With a father who qualified as a solicitor in his late fifties and a mother who earned a degree in her seventies after coming from a modest background, the importance of education was passed on to Dr Croucher. 

She said: ‘It breaks my heart what’s happening. There’s a generation of kids who, if we’re not careful, won’t achieve their potential. I want this to inspire someone else having a tough time, to know that they can still do it.’

Dr Croucher’s father, David, won a scholarship at Ealing Grammar School before going to Trinity College, Cambridge, where he gained a law degree. 

But with a wife and young family, he needed a steady income and took an administrative job. A job then came up at a building society in Zambia and he planned to continue studying to qualify as a lawyer while there.

But he discovered he could not take the exams abroad and ended up working as a planning officer for a local authority near Bristol when the family returned to the UK. 

But he never lost his desire to complete his education and spent the next 14 years sitting his law exams in his own time until he passed them in his late 50s.

His wife Elizabeth trained as a nurse and worked at hospitals, as well as providing support for Aids victims through her work with a charitable trust. 

In her 70s, she still had a thirst for knowledge so she completed an Open University degree in history of art.

Mr Croucher died from Covid in April last year aged 86. His wife, now 86 and suffering with severe dementia, lives in a care home in Bottisham, Cambridgeshire. 

Dr Croucher, who lives nearby in Swaffham Prior, said: ‘If daddy was here, he would say the most important thing in life is education and not to give up. Mum would say the same – and they’ve proved it.’

Your stamps help save lives, too

By Claire Duffin 

Even envelopes enclosing our readers’ cheques are not going to waste – they are raising money for life-saving research.

They helped the Bone Cancer Research Trust raise more than £10,000 last year when Mail Force was set up to buy personal protective equipment for frontline health workers.

And now – thanks to the campaign to provide children with computers during lockdown – your stamps are again supporting the charity. 

Its volunteers carefully cut the stamps from the envelopes, which are then sorted into categories and sold in bulk by weight.

The trust receives around £10 a kilogram working with an auction firm that sells to collectors and dealers in the UK and around the world. 

The majority of the stamps are sold to private individuals to fill gaps in their collections, but some are purchased by artists who use them to create collages on canvas.

Volunteer coordinator Terri Bush, who took delivery of 20 bags of envelopes from Mail Force last summer, said: ‘I cannot tell you how much this means. Our volunteers have been sat twiddling their thumbs, desperate for something to do. This means the world – thank you.’