Our offices and sites have been busy collecting coat and food bank donations over the past month, to help provide warm clothing and food to those who are; homeless, refugees, elderly, and those at risk of poverty.
This year, our Charity Task Team organised to participate in the annual Wrap Up event and to donate to multiple food bank charities, including the Trussle Trust, to provide food to those that are in need.
Wrap Up is now in its 10th year of its coat collection campaign. The event is run by Hands on London and encourages people to donate coats to ensure as many people as possible benefit from a warmer winter. Last year, over 33,000 warm coats were collected and distributed to over 100 charities.
This gave our people the opportunity to clear out any warm winter coats that they no longer wore and provide men, women or children less fortunate than themselves with a warmer winter. Some of our Midlands office donated their coats to Helping Hands of Birmingham. Overall, 217 coats were collected across all our sites and offices.
The Trussle Trust support a nationwide network of food banks to help provide emergency food to those in poverty. They campaign to end the need for food banks in the UK. In the last financial year, 1.9m food bank parcels were given to people in crisis.
We encouraged our people to pick up or order extra items when they went shopping and donate to a local food bank or bring into site or our offices. Items that were collected included a variety of products from cereal and soup, to toiletries, baby supplies and Christmas cakes. Over £2,400 in food value was donated overall across our sites and offices. Our Midlands team received a thank you letter from Birmingham Central foodbank, for their efforts in donating.
To involve everyone regardless of if they are working on site, in the office or from home, the team set up a donation link where we raised £2,322 for Waterloo’s foodbank, in order to give everyone a chance to donate.
After such a tough year for everyone, our Charity Task Team decided on these charities in particular to donate to because warmth and food are two of the most basic needs that no one should have to worry about. By donating coats and food to multiple charities, it gives those in need a chance to experience a winter with warmth and food.
Cassie Thurston, our Assistant Frameworks Coordinator and one of the organisers of these events, has shared her reflection on how well the campaigns went. “We have been overwhelmed by the support that our people have provided in the coat collection and food donation drive that have been running for the last few weeks. It has been a tough year for all of us, one way or another, and to see everyone pull together and work towards such heart-warming goals has been lovely to see. Not only our people, but our amazing supply chain have made some massive donations over a number of our sites and teams. As a company we have helped change over 1000 family Christmas’ over London, Leeds and the Birmingham area and for that we should all feel super proud.”
We could not have donated this amount without our supply chain partners help. Special thanks to 360 Interiors, 79 Group, AMD Environmental, Argonaut Community Enterprise, Cape E & M, Caval, CCUK, Controlled Scaffolding, Coventry Construction, Dale Studios, DMC Ashe, Earthworks, EDR, Energy Engineering, Falcon Green, Fastfence, Fortel, Fusion, Hive, I Build, IH Equipment, Jewsons, Lee Brothers, Onsite, Parish, RME, Shaca, Studwelders Ltd, Titan and Winters Electrical.
Although this Christmas will not be ‘normal’, we will appreciate that we are able to have food on the table and a warm place to spend the festive period, regardless of who we are able to spend it with.
We are proud to support these charities and provide warm clothing and food to those in need. 