Over two years ago we launched our volunteering programme offering all employees two days paid leave to volunteer. To make volunteering more accessible I've worked with a number of our regional offices to develop partnerships with charitable organisations, providing opportunities for people to give something back.
Over recent months a group of colleagues from our Sydney office spent an afternoon working with the Cooks River Valley Association. The river is one of the most over developed and urbanised rivers in Australia and the team assisted the Association to clean up the polluted river banks and plant new native trees and shrubs. The Association aims to bring the river back to full health ultimately making it safe enough for people to swim in it.
In Singapore 29 staff members joined other volunteers at Willing Hearts, an organisation that provides daily meals and other support services to the underprivileged and marginalized members of Singapore society. The soup kitchen distributes about 3,000 meals a day and Euromonitor employees were able to assist with the food preparation and packing of food parcels that were distributed at over 40 points across the country.
More recently, a team from our Cape Town office partnered with Capelands Landscaping to build a vegetable garden for the Athlone School for the Blind. Not even a partial cloud cover and sporadic rain showers could dampen the spirits of the volunteers as they created paths between the beds, worked compost into the sandy, nutrient depleted soil and tilled the soil ready for the planting. The school doesn't only support children with sight problems but also takes in children with all kinds of disabilities. The vegetable garden will be a great opportunity for them to tap into their creative side, play to the senses of touch, taste and smell and generally make a huge difference to the lives of the children and staff.