How do we give back to your local community?

Resident Feedback 

We’ve been holding virtual events to hear from more of you while we’re not able to host face to face events. Following our first event, some residents suggested holding an event for us all to discuss how we can give back to local communities and further support people who are already active in the community. Take part in the next event by signing up on the virtual event registration form by Monday 14 September 2020 5:00pm. 

Going further to support residents  

Some of you may be aware from recent articles that we have set up a charitable fund to support residents experiencing financial hardship. The fund was set up in April this year and since then has allowed us to help residents where other avenues have not been able to provide the support. We’d like to hear from you on how best we can balance supporting individual hardship as well as helping the wider community.  

How your ideas can (or will) inform the decisions 

We want you to help us develop a process for managing this fund. Examples of things we’d like to discuss: 

• Should we apportion the budget for hardship, as the ‘need to have’ funds alongside the community funding which could be seen as the ‘nice to have, but not a necessity’
• Who should be responsible for choosing the community initiatives that benefit from the funding and how much is available per project to spread the budget as far as possible.

Continued efforts 

Over the years we’ve supported external charities by fundraising for organisations like Cancer Research UK, Macmillan, St Mungo’s and most recently the Air Ambulance for London and Essex & Herts Air Ambulance. Colleagues and Contractors raised a staggering £60,000 for one charity in a single activity with the London to Paris Bike Ride. We’d like to continue to fundraise in this way but rather than raise money for external charities want to raise funds for our own charitable fund to support all of you and the communities in which you live.  

The virtual event will be held on Thursday 17 September 6.30pm to 7.30pm. If you're interested, join up by filling out the virtual event registration form by Monday 14 September 2020 5:00pm.