Cummins Turbo Technologies is extremely proud to continue our support of the Examiner awards ceremony and in 2014 we are sponsoring the Achievement Award.

Cummins has a long history in Huddersfield on the St Andrew’s Road site where the turbocharger company was originally founded in 1952.

In the first year Holset employed 25 people and had sales of £45,000. In 1973 Holset was purchased by Cummins and today we have approximately 1,000 people employed in Huddersfield and the global turbocharger business now exceeds $1bn.

Cummins Turbo technologies logo
Cummins Turbo technologies logo

Cummins is committed to corporate social responsibility in all our local communities around the world. Our employees serve our communities by volunteering time and talent to help address community needs.

Improving our communities implies a broader level of involvement, engaging in dialogue around problems, building coalitions around solutions and giving resources and skills.

In 2013 we engaged 640 members of our staff in community work contributing over 5,500 hours. We also raised a total of £6,500 through fundraising activates and donated £2,500 to the Mission Café, our fundraising partner in 2013.

We know that the Examiner Community Awards is a fantastic event that recognises some truly outstanding work in our area. We are excited to be there again this year.

Huddersfield Town chairman Dean Hoyle
Huddersfield Town chairman Dean Hoyle

Dean Hoyle has turned Huddersfield Town into a real community club.

Dean, who has been chairman for four years, set up the Town Foundation in July 2012 which is helping to improve the lives of thousands of children across Kirklees – and he matches pound for pound the money anyone else puts into the charity.

The 47-year-old was born in Wakefield and in 1997 established The Card Factory which went on to become a business consisting of over 500 shops nationwide employing more than 5,000 staff – and his huge support for charity started then when the business donated £1m to Macmillan Cancer Support.

In 2010 he sold the business to became 100% owner of Huddersfield Town.

His charity work includes establishing the ‘Keep It Up’ campaign to raise money for the Yorkshire Air Ambulance and Huddersfield Town Academy.

The scheme was created in 2009 by Dean and Yorkshire Air Ambulance chairman Peter Sunderland with the club gifting its main home shirt sponsorship to the charity for the 2009/10 season.

Dean said: “The football club was looking for a charity partner and we were aware that quite a few of our supporters had required the YAA services so thought it would be perfect to support this charity. The ambulance does such fantastic work yet is expensive to keep in the air.”

Now in its fourth season, the Keep It Up campaign is on the verge of raising £1m to be split evenly between the two causes. At the heart of that brilliant amount is the annual ‘Pedal for Pounds’ bike rides, which have seen a cumulative total of over 1,000 Huddersfield Town fans cycle up and down the country to raise money for the cause – and Dean is the only cyclist to do all five fundraising rides plus a sixth ride to Wembley for the successful play-off.

The latest cycle ride took place late last month when 295 fans joined Dean to retrace the legendary Herbert Chapman’s journey in reverse. Whereas Herbert moved from Huddersfield Town to Arsenal as manager, the fans cycled from Arsenal’s Emirates Stadium to our John Smith’s Stadium in time for the game against Leicester City in a ride dubbed ‘Pedal for Pounds 5 – the Chapman Trail.’

The Town Foundation is the club’s registered charity. Once again pioneered by Dean, the charity was founded in July 2012 with the remit of ‘making a difference’ in this area.

Dean said: “The football club has always tried to engage with its local area through initiatives such as its Football In The Community department, but the Foundation is something entirely different.”

Dean had taken almost 2,000 local children to Huddersfield’s two play-off final games at Manchester’s Old Trafford in May 2011 and Wembley Stadium in May 2012. Without the money raised through initiatives such as a bike ride from Huddersfield to Wembley in the week leading up to the 2012 game, those children would not have had that treasured memory.

Dean said: “The needs of some of the children in the area, combined with the generosity of the people and businesses that donated £45,000 to the cause, really opened my eyes to just what can be achieved by working together with the football club. After the ride I went into one school and heard some stories about pupils there and the thought came to me that other kids go to school hungry which means they find it hard to concentrate. The more we talked to schools the more we realised it was a big problem throughout Kirklees.

“For me, it’s about the need to do the right thing and we are using the expertise of the people at Huddersfield Town, along with the skills of the other businesses that come on board and support us, to improve the lives of thousands of local children in our area.”

Since it was set up the Foundation has served 130,000 free breakfasts to primary and secondary schools through 16 ‘Early Kick-Off’ breakfast clubs. Across the breakfast clubs the charity is serving around 5,000 breakfasts a week which costs £2,500. The healthy breakfast supplements the wellbeing of children, many of whom were attending school daily without a breakfast to kick-start their day. The youngsters tuck into food such as fruits, grains, dairy products and other protein-rich foods.

These initiatives – and others like it – are made possible by the support of local businesses and individuals, but Dean also matches every donation pound for pound and pays all the administration costs out of his own pocket too.

“What’s unique about this is that every penny goes to the frontline where it is needed,” said Dean.

The charity has also provided 15,000 free Huddersfield Town Foundation Reading Diaries helping to encourage literacy in children across 70 schools in Kirklees. They were launched in November 2012 after learning that a National Trust literacy study revealed that children are reading less now than ever as their lives become crowded with other activities. The diaries means pupils and parents can read together and track their progress while including important messages communicated through football to make reading ‘cool’.

With a dedicated and driven board of trustees and patrons including Olympic hero Ed Clancy and Yorkshire Cricket Club captain Andy Gale, The Town Foundation’s vision and goal is to continue to do the “right thing” and mirror the outstanding work of the football club which prides itself as being The Family Club.

Dean is married to Janet and the couple have two sons, 17-year-old Daniel and 13-year-old Joshua.