We take great pride in supporting our local communities, volunteering and fundraising for local charities and causes close to our heart. As part of our 70th Anniversary celebrations, aligned with our continuous commitment to local communities, we set ourselves a target of 70 hours’ volunteering in 2023 - and we delivered over 300 hours! Congratulations to all of our colleagues for this achievement, we’re very proud of you. Here we highlight some of the fantastic causes our colleagues volunteered for during the last 12 months.
Small Acts of Kindness
Small Acts of Kindness (SAOK) are a charity that source and distribute practical gifts to older people in Hertfordshire. Their aim is to ensure that every older person feels warm in their home and connected to their community. They do this by sourcing and distributing practical gifts that reduce the negative impact that feeling lonely and isolated can have on older people’s physical and mental wellbeing.
Their gifts help older people who are cold in their homes and often have to make the impossible choice between heating their homes and buying food. Throughout winter 2023, SAOK sourced, packed, and distributed 12,000 Warm in Winter gift bags, helping to heat the person, when they can’t afford to heat their home ensuring that they are warmer in their homes, happier and a little more connected to their community.
Following a previous successful volunteering day, ten colleagues volunteered again back in November to help pack bags of kindness and pass these onto a central collection point for onward distribution. Our colleagues attended two separate sessions where they worked alongside other volunteers in a friendly and relaxed atmosphere. It was enlightening seeing all the hard work that goes into packing and distributing these bags. With a cost-of-living crisis too, the fantastic work that SAOK does provides a lifeline to many who are struggling throughout the winter months. We are proud to play a small part in the process.
Watling View School
On a warm summer’s day back in July, seven of our colleagues made their way to Watling View School for a day of painting and garden clearance. Watling View is a maintained special school in St Albans, which caters for up to 92 pupils from 2-19 years old, with a wide range of complex and profound learning difficulties.
Our team was split into two groups – one to clear outside and the other to paint classrooms (swapping duties after lunch). The first outside “task force” were required to clear all the bricks, rocks, wood, netting, and general building materials from beside the hydrotherapy pool shed and move them to behind the café and a further storage area. Wheelbarrows were filled and trundled all morning and by lunchtime the area had been completely cleared. The reason for doing this was to make space for the hydrotherapy pool shed to be demolished and a new larger, more fit for purpose building constructed in its place. Meanwhile the “interior design force” had been very busy painting a large classroom – trickier than first thought as there was a huge amount of educational information and equipment attached to the walls that needed to be painted around.
After lunch our teams changed over and the outdoor crew took down and moved the ingenious plastic bottle greenhouse (which the students had built some years previously), whilst the interior force painted a second classroom. The greenhouse had been set up with a self-watering system, so that all the vegetables and fruit that the students had planted during the summer term would survive and flourish over the holidays when no-one was available to manage and water them.
Finally, our team all pulled together at the end of the day to lift and move the various sections of the greenhouse (which were very heavy and bulky) to a far fence for storage until the new building had been completed and the greenhouse could be refitted. It was a very busy and fulfilling day enjoyed by all and great to help such a fantastic cause.
Take a read of all our volunteering in 2023 in Issue 1 Part 1 of our Mutual Magazine here or visit our dedicated volunteering page in our Mutual section here.