Thank you to our Chair March Hancock

This week, we say thank you to our wonderful Chair, March Hancock, following his retirement from our Trustee Board. March joined our Board in 2007, returning after a short break in 2014 and becoming our Chair in 2019.

“March has successfully steered the charity through its most significant period of growth in living memory. During his tenure, the charity had to navigate the twin challenges of Covid and the cost of living crisis. Despite the difficult external environment, through March’s strategic leadership, the charity has expanded to meet the rising levels of need we have seen across all our project areas. I have personally benefitted from March’s wise counsel, and it is a great testament to his ability to mentor and nurture talent that the Trustees he has personally recruited have taken up key positions on the Board leaving us in a very healthy position for the future.”

Jonathan Pauling

Chief Executive

March’s involvement with the charity goes further back than his time as a Trustee. In the 1940s and 50s, March’s Great Aunt organised our annual Alexandra Rose Day, and as a young boy, once Rose Day collections were finished, March helped scrape off the old tin labels and stick on the new ones for the following year. March tells us that these early experiences strongly influenced his joining our charity as a Trustee many years later.

We are delighted to introduce Celia Cole as our new Chair of Trustees. Celia joined us as a Trustee in 2019 and steps up from Vice-Chair of our Board.

“I am honoured and excited to be inheriting the Chair of the Alexandra Rose Charity, putting some of what I’ve learned during my time working in the food system to use. At a time when health inequalities are widening, we are uniquely placed to support children, individuals and families to access fresh fruit and veg through an intervention proven to help them, and their wider communities, to thrive. I’m extremely grateful to every single one of you supporting and powering this organisation to help us reach more people in need in their communities.”

Celia Cole

Chair

To honour March’s long connection to the charity and the huge impact he has had as a Trustee and Chair, we are thrilled that March has accepted the honorary position of Life Vice President.

Thank you March for all your hard work, humour, and selfless dedication to the work of ARC.