NEW APPLICATIONS SOUGHT NOW

The next round of the NorthLink community sponsorship programme gets under way on April 1 when a further investment of £50,000 in free and discounted travel fares will be made available.

This next tranche of sponsorship will take the amount invested by NorthLink since 2002 to £520,000. The initiative is designed to support individuals, local charities, community and sporting groups and athletes in Orkney and Shetland plus groups and individuals travelling from the Scottish mainland  for events in the Northern Isles. Recipients are chosen on a six-monthly basis.

 Elaine Tulloch, NorthLink marketing projects manager, said: “The broad range of our sponsorship recipients reflects virtually the entire spectrum of island life. NorthLink is a company which exists primarily for the Orkney and Shetland communities and, on top of our islanders’ discounted fares scheme, this sponsorship programme now in its six year and having clocked up around half a million pounds reflects that.

“The sponsorship programme continues to be immensely popular and we expect interest in the next tranche of awards to be extremely high and I would urge anyone who is interested to make contact with us now.

“We continue to receive scores of applications from a wide spectrum of interests – sporting, charity, community, arts – they are all represented. We try to ensure that the variety of causes and individuals that we support will continue to enrich a wide variety of the islands social, cultural and sporting life,” she said.