Christmas comes early for school competition winners
Posted: 23 Dec, 2019
Christmas has come early for local primary school pupils, after they won top prizes in a competition to design a natural gas-themed decoration for their school Christmas tree.
SGN Natural Gas gifted a real Christmas tree to schools in every town in its network area, and the arts and crafts competition attracted over 700 entries from pupils of all ages.
Pupils in Artigarvan, Coalisland, Cookstown, Derrylin, Dungannon, Enniskillen, Magherafelt, Omagh and Strabane became Santa’s Little Helpers, creating an array of natural gas-themed decorations and baubles to festoon the Christmas trees provided for their schools.
Hundreds of entries were uploaded to the SGN Natural Gas website where a special competition page was opened to enable people to vote for their favourite decorations. The entries with the most votes in each town received 1stand 2ndprizes.
First prize winners were delighted to receive a Samsung Galaxy Tablet, while the runners-up received a £50 Amazon voucher.
The man tasked with delivering a consignment of 6ft Christmas trees to almost 50 primary schools in the western area, was Gerard Fox from Maine Nursery Centre in Omagh.
Gerard said: “It was great to help bring Christmas cheer to so many local schools on behalf of SGN Natural Gas. A real Christmas tree is that bit extra special and both staff and children loved seeing all the trees arriving at their schools.”
While Santa’s sleigh would have been handy to carry the load, Gerard used a more conventional mode of wheeled transport to do his festive rounds. The schools were thrilled to get such an unexpected early Christmas present and enjoyed the opportunity to get creative with their decorations for the trees, which were also supplied with solar lights.
Congratulating the competition winners, Darren Young, Head of Business Development with SGN Natural Gas, said: “Well done to our winners and all the children who put so much effort into creating their natural gas-themed decorations. We were really impressed with the imaginative and colourful designs and, we also wish to thank all the parents and school staff who guided the pupils and uploaded the entries to our website.”
“This competition is a fun and engaging way to raise awareness about the exceptional demand for natural gas which has now arrived in the west and, we look forward to ongoing positive community engagement in our network area in the months and years ahead.”
By mid-2020, thousands of consumers in the SGN Natural Gas network area will have access to natural gas which provides an affordable, cleaner and convenient form of energy which is kinder to the environment than other commonly used fossil fuels such as oil and coal.
