Volunteering and fundraising

Since 2001, we have given at least 1% of our pre-tax profits each year to charitable and community causes, through a combination of employees’ time, cash and in-kind donations.

In 2009, to celebrate our tenth birthday we allocated £25,000 to our charitable funds and asked our people to nominate charities to benefit. Following the success of this initiative, we decided to create another £25,000 charitable fund in 2010. Our people suggested over 300 good causes they felt passionate about and we selected 50 to receive £500 each, including:

• Zoë’s Place Baby Hospice, Liverpool which provides 24-hour respite and palliative care for babies and young children with life-limiting and life-threatening conditions.
• The Christie Charitable Fund, UK which raises money for the Christie NHS Foundation Trust, treating cancer patients in the North West and carrying out world-class research.
• Jane/Finch Community and Family Centre, Toronto which offers community services and programmes to tackle poverty and improve social justice, resident capacity building and engagement.

Involving our people in community engagement not only increases morale and motivation, but also gives them an opportunity to develop their skills. We have a strong volunteering spirit and our community engagement in the UK has included helping clean up the River Thames; assisting at a sports-based holiday course for disabled children; running marathons and doing skydives to raise money for charity; and working on conservation projects.

All our operations get involved in volunteering and fundraising. In Canada, total charitable and community giving was £34,682 in 2010. We held various fundraising activities, such as an annual baseball tournament to raise money for World Vision Canada and a golf day which raised over CAD 4,500 for the Canadian Cancer Society. We also continue to support the Canadian Ministry of Transportation’s ‘Adopt a Highway’ programme, in which volunteers pick up litter from sections of the highway.

The Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region increased its community engagement in 2010 and the total charitable and community giving was £69,531. Our people in MENA collaborated with non-profit and government organisations on various clean-up initiatives and awareness campaigns. In 2010, 200 people from Al Futtaim Carillion volunteered at the Emirates Environmental Group’s annual clean-up campaign across the United Arab Emirates.

Sustainability Week

We run a Group-wide Sustainability Week in June each year, to coincide with World Environment Day. Our people get involved in various volunteering and fundraising activities and we raise awareness of key sustainability themes through Team Talks, our internal communications and training sessions. For each of these daily themes, we highlight ways in which our people can make a difference individually and in teams, both at work and at home.

Thanks to all our people, the week was an outstanding success. Here are just a few of the week’s highlights:

• Arith Liyanage, Managing Director of our Rail business, climbed Mount Kilimanjaro to raise money for Railway Children, a charity helping street children across the world.
• Adam Green, Managing Director of UK Construction, cycled 924 miles from Land’s End to John O’Groats to promote sustainable transport and raise money for Clic Sargent, which supports children with cancer.
• Carillion Facilities Management ordered water-saving devices for toilet cisterns that save up to 2.5 litres per flush. They handed these out around the office with an A–Z of water-saving ideas.
• The sustainability team in Canada arranged a multicultural lunch to promote diversity. Each person brought a different dish so that everyone could enjoy the tastes of countries around the world.
• The team from our Heathrow Terminal 5C site helped out at the Heathrow Special Needs Farm. We painted two rooms, installed new lighting and donated furniture that was no longer required in our buildings. We also laid a path and built a rainwater storage tank.
• At the Investment Council Headquarters project in Abu Dhabi, talented construction workers performed a play and a song on each day’s theme.
• At our Abberton Reservoir project in the UK, Carillion engaged with a local school to make and position 50 scarecrows around the reservoir to reduce the risk of animals straying onto our construction site. Once they were built, we gave prizes of books to the children who had produced the best scarecrows.