Paddington Community Programme 2019 in numbers
The Paddington Community Programme is celebrating a record-breaking year, having supported 1273 Paddington employees to complete over 5000 hours of volunteering in the local community.
We have been delighted to be able to launch several long-term volunteering programmes this year; including a weekly mentoring scheme pupils at St Marylebone School. Marks & Spencer colleagues are equipping the Year 10 students with the skills required to secure work experience placements and be successful in them. Mitsubishi have run a successful afterschool science club at Marylebone Boys School and due to popular demand are now busy planning new sessions for 2020. The boys will have the opportunity to build and test hydraulic diggers, and present their work to senior colleagues at Mitsubishi in March as part of Westminster City Council's STEAM week.
You can download the full infographic here.
Colleagues have also been sharing their hobbies – delivering photography workshops and a monthly book group at The Marylebone Project, visiting the elderly in their homes as befrienders for Neighborcare and bringing stories to life as reading volunteers in primary schools. We now have 48 colleagues reading with pupils in three Paddington primaries, and from 2020 we’ll be recruiting employees’ dogs to join them as reading buddies.
By popular demand we were back on the water for the Great British Spring Clean, National Volunteers’ Week and Silver Sunday, with volunteers boarding GoBoats to collect litter from the canal in March and host floating tea parties in June and September, serving cake to 138 guests.
June saw our busiest week for volunteering, with 165 colleagues participating in 14 volunteering events. The teams painted murals, built bug hotels, flat pack furniture and raised beds, conducted mock interviews with 120 Year 10 pupils and hosted a party for children at a local youth club.
The 2020 volunteering calendar is already filling up. Vodafone will be delivering Microsfot Excel workshops to Year 12 pupils at King Solomon Academy in January and social media workshops to service users from Westminster Carers in February. Mars Wrigley, who have an office on Kingdom Street, have recently joined the Partnership and have their first event scheduled for 30 January at Penfold Community Hub; and colleagues from Mitsubishi, Marks & Spencer, Visa and Vodafone will be supporting careers events in February at Marylebone Boys School, King Solomon Academy and St Marylebone School.
If you would like to find out more about how you can be involved in this hive of activity, please contact our Community Programme Manager, who would be delighted to talk to you further.
20.12.19
