Communities
Community engagement
Engaging with our communities through colleague volunteering and charitable giving is an important part of our culture, and we are also a not for profit organisation. Our colleagues are encouraged to use their time and skills for volunteering, fundraising for charity and helping people fulfil their potential. Through this we help to unlock the potential of thousands of people worldwide.
Giving back
We partner with educational charities internationally, and our colleagues are encouraged to fundraise, support and volunteer with these.
Since coming together as one organisation, we have donated more than £177,000 through a combination of organisational donations, colleague fundraising, matched giving and Give As You Earn.
Our colleagues are imaginative and generous in their support for their communities.
Volunteering
All our colleagues are encouraged to give their time and skills to support their local communities and can take up to two days of paid volunteering leave.
In 2021-22, we’ve had reports from around 300 colleagues around the world volunteering nearly 1300 hours to a variety of projects, including 46 colleagues who gave nearly 300 hours to environmental activities.
Many of our people have also raised funds for our charity partners.
Charity partnerships
Our legacy organisations worked closely with local and international charities in our locations around the world. Now our charity partners are selected by colleagues globally, who vote for international charity partners operating near one or more of our regional offices. Alongside this, all UK-based colleagues can nominate charity partners in Cambridgeshire, Coventry and the North-East of England.
Our partners for 2022-24 are:
Bookaid International sends around one million new books to libraries, schools, prisons, hospitals, universities and refugee camps in over 25 countries every year.
The Positive Youth Foundation helps to raise the aspirations and life chances of 8- to 25-year-olds by running regular groups with girls and young women, looked after children and newly arrived refugees, helping those at risk of exclusion from school, offending or exploitation.
Centre 33 provides free and confidential support to young people up to 25 with mental health, caring responsibilities, housing, sexual health and more.
The North East Autism Society is dedicated to helping autistic young people fulfil their potential by providing care and education for children, young people and adults.
Our colleagues around the world also support a wide range of registered charities of their choice. Find out more about some of the charities we’ve supported around the world in 2021-22 below.
Book donations
Nearly 172,000 books were donated to a wide range of causes internationally in 2021-22, including: Gully Ruggers Foundation (Yellow Streets), 17000ft. Foundation, Scope for Change and Bal Raksha Bharat in India. Books were donated to Book Aid International, who supported a Polish partner to deliver primary materials to Ukrainian learners; Borderline Books, who support prisons, refugee and other community groups; and Canterbury Welcomes Refugees. Donations were also made to Salle Playa del Carmen and Salle Ayahualulco schools in Mexico; many organisations in South Africa including the South African Department of Basic Education which supported people impacted by the devastating KwaZulul Natal floods; and More Than Words, LGBT Books to Prisoners and The Tranzmission Prison Project in the US.
Local connections
Our colleagues have chosen to work with a wide range of charitable organisational around the world, supporting causes with which they have a personal or professional connection.
Our main UK charity partners who we worked with during the three-years up to 2022 were: Blue Smile, Castle School, Coventry and Warwickshire Mind, Shine Trust and SOS Children’s International Villages. We also donated to the Cambridge Refugee Resettlement Campaign, to support research of language needs and preferred mode of access, as well as the recruitment of experienced teachers.
Other UK charities supported in 2021-22 included (listed in alphabetial order): Albert Kennedy Trust, Alzheimers Research UK, Alzheimers Society, Beat!, British Red Cross, Cambridge United Youth and Community Trust, Cambridge Aid, Cancer Research UK, Cystic Fibrosis, Disasters Emergency Committee, Embrace Child Victims of Crime, Kaleidoscope Trust, LawWorks, National Deaf Children’s Society, Rainbow Trust and Shelter.
International charities supported in 2021-22 included: Indigenous Literacy Foundation in Australia; Ação da Cidadania and Grupo Amar in Brazil; Gully Ruggers Foundation’s Yellow Streets initiative, the 17000ft Foundation, Scope for Change and Bal Raksha Bharat (Save the Children) in India; Salle Playa del Carmen and Salle Ayahualulco schools in Mexico; SPARK! in the Philippines; GreenPop, Beautiful Gate Ministries International and Red Cross After Care programme in South Africa; and Operation Backpack, Pencil and United Way of Kentucky in the US.
Philippines
We have partnered with SPARK!, a non-government organisation championing women’s rights, promotion of gender equality and advancement of women’s economic and political roles. We donated books in support of International Day of Women and Girls and Science and International Women’s Day.
South Africa
We partner with the social enterprise, TSIBA, to provide bursaries and tuition scholarships for its Business School students and bursaries for the Thuto Trust, an education trust which invests in young people through their tertiary education. This makes tuition more affordable.
United Kingdom
We’ve partnered with our local Wildlife Trust since 2008, helping with a range of projects such as planting sphagnum moss on an experimental wet farm designed to capture carbon and reduce peat erosion or weeding riverside meadows to improve biodiversity.
United States
We made donations to Operation Backpack, an anti-poverty organisation, which works to end homelessness and helps children succeed in school by providing essential supplies; also to the United Way of Kentucky, providing disaster relief in response to the devastating tornadoes.
Brazil
Attendees at our longstanding Cambridge Day series donated more than 42 tons of food to local families in need via our Food for Thought project. This year nearly 1500 teachers attended events in nine cities and together with local booksellers, donated 2.5 tons of food
India
Our Delhi-based team took part in a tree-planting initiative which aims to develop an urban, micro-forest at Ghaziabad. We are supporting the environment project run by the charity Say Earth for two years as part of our local corporate social responsibility initiatives and global employee volunteering programme.
