Great Places and corporate social responsibility
Great Places employees make big differences to many lives and communities as part of their everyday duties. But they also ‘do their bit’ in other ways such as volunteering, raising money for charity and taking part in sponsored events. Our teams regularly compete in events such as the Manchester 10k run and the Manchester to Blackpool bike ride.
Our staff forum, Voice, has a hard-working charity committee that generates and allocates much-needed funds to good causes Last year, £5,000 was donated.
We also dream up opportunities for our people – the office workers as well as ‘front line’ staff - to get involved with projects and initiatives such as clean-ups and gardening. We tackle whatever needs to be done, and make sure participants get as much fun and satisfaction as those who will benefit from the results.
Our boldest CSR commitment is our long-running link with the Walk Centre in Nakuru, Kenya, an amazing place that provides food and schooling for street children who would otherwise forage for their meals on a rubbish dump. Every year, volunteers from Great Places visit for a month, and help to educate, entertain and look after the youngsters – an experience that’s life-changing for everyone.
Closer to our own back yard, but still with the global picture in mind, our robust environmental strategy – click here to read it – details our ambition to be as green as we possibly can be and set a great example. We already compost in the office, car share, cycle, take the train and switch off lights wherever we can, and have plans to do much, much more to protect the planet.
Team up with us
Great Places has all sorts of projects in 30 local authority areas across the north. Many of them would welcome willing workers whether it’s for a day, a week, even better, a longer commitment.
We know lots of firms would like to do more in the way of corporate social responsibility but we realise that setting up projects and seeing them through can create big tasks that busy managers might not realistically have time for.
If you team up with us, we’ll sort out all the peripheries and let you concentrate on the hands-on stuff that will make a big difference to people’s lives and communities - and leave your staff feeling proud and fulfilled.
You could get to know homeless people or teenage parents, help to organise community events or offer practical skills like painting or gardening.
If you tell us what your people are interested in, or would be good at, we’ll find you something amazing to do.
Call Dave Sedman, group head of social enterprise, on 0161 447 509, for an informal chat, or email david.sedman@greatplaces.org.uk