Paddington Community Programme

The Paddington Partnership offers a bespoke corporate community involvement service, the Paddington Community Programme.

Established in 2004 as Time for Paddington, the programme spans both worlds – corporate and community. The results speak for themselves. We deliver positive outcomes for some of London’s most demanding and successful businesses, placing over 1,500 employee volunteers in more than 50 different projects each year. Companies subscribe on an annual basis.

Please note: for non-subscribers, a charge is made to scope, match, brief, risk-assess and support companies throughout volunteering events.

As a subscriber to our Community Programme, we provide an end-to-end service, adding tangible benefits at every level of your company. There are a whole variety of ways you could get involved in supporting charities, community groups, schools and social enterprises on your doorstep; whether as individual employees or teams of colleagues, and for one-off events or on a more regular basis.

How We Work

We work with over 50 schools and community partners in Westminster, whose work touches every aspect of need; including health, housing, the elderly, mental health, young people, families and homelessness.

The programme does not make direct financial contributions, we work with your in-house community or CSR team, introducing you to community partners. We promote volunteering in your company and register and place all your volunteers individually. You can select from a variety of initiatives to suit skills and time.

We broker partnerships between businesses, charities and schools, with participation ranging from a fun, physical challenge to a long term engagement. We gather feedback and provide bespoke, personalised monitoring reports on your behalf and produce case studies to celebrate your impact.

We will help you to apply your core community priorities and will develop and manage a programme which delivers in one, or a range, of the following areas.

You can read our Charitable Giving policy here.

Specialist skill sharing

We support individual employees and teams of colleagues to utilise their work-based skills to support charities and social enterprises in one-off workshops and longer term mentoring and trustee roles.

Organise CV workshops, goal setting and mock interview sessions for local unemployed people and school leavers
We devise skill sharing activities and programmes based on your core business priorities, in areas such as HR, finance, IT, marketing, property, e-commerce or business planning
Place your staff as trustees in charities and governors in schools

Volunteering in schools

We work closely with neighbouring primary and secondary schools, placing volunteers in projects supporting pupils and teachers. These include:

Placing volunteers in primary schools as reading and number partners, supporting pupils one-to-one on a weekly or fortnightly basis
Opportunities to run lunchtime and afterschool clubs, with particular demand currently for chess and coding
Mentoring support for secondary school pupils
Hosting careers talks, assemblies, trips and work experience programmes

Download our Volunteering in Schools factsheet here.

The benefits for your business:

Enables you to have a meaningful relationship with key community stakeholders
There is evidence to show that facilitating opportunities for employee volunteering improves colleague satisfaction and consequently retention rates
Improved morale of employees can increase levels of motivation and productivity
Develops skills in mentoring, communication, leadership and management
Can help to raise awareness of your brand and build credibility within the local community
Engaging with the community gives you direct contact with future employees, suppliers and customers

The benefits for your employees:

Provides an opportunity to work as a team on a shared project – increasingly important as businesses move towards hot desking and home working
Can challenge employees to develop new approaches, explore alternative ways of working and think creatively
Opportunity to share and develop workplace skills, building confidence of employees
Offers a break from work routine. Doing something positive and purposeful can improve wellbeing

The benefits for the community:

Employee volunteers can challenge charities and community groups to question approaches and think differently about problems, which can lead to more efficient and effective working. This can increase their impact and lead to cost savings
Expertise of employee volunteers can build confidence and empower the staff, service users and students of local charities, community groups and schools
Giving time can reduce loneliness and isolation, improving well-being in the local community
An improved physical environment can raise morale and make local people feel safer and happier

Testimonials

"The partnership took away the huge challenge for a team of colleagues with different ideas wanting to use their volunteer days who are based both across the country and in London. They provided our team with a variety of charity opportunities from which we have all benefited and enjoyed. For the larger team activities it gave those who don’t usually work together a ‘team bonding’ opportunity. Equally the shorter, individual sessions have resonated with the team encouraging them to organise, through the partnership, regular link ups in the future."

Jayne, Marks and Spencer

“I saw things through the eyes of the student rather than just from an adult perspective. Being able to read between the lines and understand what was not being said proved to be invaluable. I became a better listener.”

Don, Visa Europe

Make an Enquiry

Download our programme overview here. You can complete a volunteer enquiry form in advance, which could help you and your colleagues identify how you might want to volunteer and help us create the right volunteering opportunity for you.

We are committed to keeping all information related to our volunteers safe, and details of the steps taken to ensure this can be read in our Privacy Policy here.

The Paddington Partnership