BT has partnered with the British Red Cross and will provide the organisation with £100,000 a year for three years. The partnership will deliver disaster relief worldwide and will benefit communities that have been impacted by natural disasters or human conflict.
The money will be used to provide the British Red Cross with emergency satellite telephones, IT equipment and GPS systems for relief vehicles. The company will also donate the skills and expertise of its employees through volunteering activities with the Red Cross IT and telecommunications emergency roster, and will fund its training programme.
Carlsberg has selected Help the Hospices, the national charity for the hospice movement, to be the company’s new charity partner for the next two years. It is hoped that the partnership will raise £50k through national and local campaigns, with staff from the drinks company being given the opportunity to take part in team challenges, national fundraising months, and a payroll giving scheme.
The Cranfield Trust will launch a new initiative in September that will recruit MBA and postgraduate volunteers to act as consultants to the voluntary sector. The Trust is a long established charity that provides free management consultancy support to the voluntary sector through a national register of skilled volunteers from the business. This new venture, called The Smart Fund, will focus on charities that address issues such as social exclusion, disability and poverty.
Nestlé has donated a vacated factory building in Phnom Penh to the Swiss foundation, Hagar International, as part of an expanded partnership to fight malnutrition and poverty in Cambodia.
The factory will be used by the charity – which helps destitute women and children in Cambodia – to expand production of enriched soya milk for Hagar Soya, a social enterprise owned by the foundation.
Hagar Soya aims to generate sustainable employment for underprivileged women. Nestlé will also provide technical training to foundation staff to help expand the enterprise’s commercial success. It is estimated that nearly 20,000 children benefit from Hagar’s nutrition products each month, and that over 350,000 people have benefited from their clean water programme started in 2001.
A group of companies have developed a CD-ROM-based guide to internationalising employee community engagement, which aims to help build capacity within the business and voluntary sectors to deliver sustainable corporate responsibility opportunities.
The toolkit, which draws on the experience of companies across Europe, features discussions and research, troubleshooting guides, case studies and methodologies, as well as a checklist for setting up an employee community engagement programme.
Launched on June 21, the ENGAGE Toolkit was developed by, among others, Allen & Overy, Citi, DLA Piper, Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer, GE, IBM, KPMG, Linklaters, Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley and Nokia.
The initiative was facilitated by BITC and IBLF who are making the toolkit available to members of the ENGAGE programme.
Research by Social Enterprise London has estimated that social enterprises could carry out contracts for the 2012 Olympics worth a total of half a billion pounds.
Contracts for fair-trade produce, property development, waste and recycling, transport, medical services and community engagement advice could all be carried out by social enterprises like Café-Direct, Divine Chocolate and Hackney Community Transport.
The report – The role of social enterprise in the London 2012 Olympic Games and Paralympic Games – also said that many enterprises needed to form networks to share best practice and provide joint services that would give them a better chance of landing big contracts.
Contact Social Enterprise London 020 7022 1920 www.sel.org.uk
Reach out
Charities can now apply for Reach – the Vodafone UK Foundation flagship funding programme. Charities can apply for £5m funding across three years for work helping 16-25 year olds facing social exclusion. To be eligible, charities must apply in collaboration – either in pairs or wider groups. The aim of the Reach initiative is to create a step change in the delivery of services to young people.
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