Last year's report referred to the lack of a systematic data-capture system relating to the charitable giving and community engagement of the Group's offices. During the year under review an all-office survey was conducted which disclosed an immense amount of good-works activity throughout the Group. It should be a simple task in future years to keep this updated and to measure the impact of Company-generated initiatives on the Group's total effort.
A small sample of such efforts to date include:
- WYG Newcastle's management of two teams of children in the sponsored Sandcastle Challenge in aid of Children North East;
- WYG Teesside's donation and training in support of the Freeborough College School Recycling project;
- WYG Bristol's and Cardiff's participation in the gruelling Black Mountain Challenge in aid of Health for All;
- WYG Edinburgh's four-woman team entry to the 5km sponsored Race for Life in support of Cancer Research;
- WYG Leeds' donation towards the Flower Festival organised by St. Michael and All Angels Church in Headingley;
- WYG Rail's sponsored participation in the Three Peaks Walk for Caring for Life;
- WYG Dublin's active support to school-age participants in the Steps to Engineering K'Nex Challenge to find the Junior Engineer for Ireland 2006 team;
- WYG Belfast's provision of 17 staff over a five day period in June 2006 to support participants in the all Ireland 2006
Special Olympics Ireland Games;
- WYG International's work with young job seekers in Poland, empowering them to take control of their own careers and to move outside the traditional comfort-zone of local employment; and
- WYG International's participation in a programme to reduce rural poverty in Cambodia through increases in agricultural, livestock and fisheries production, development of local economic and employment opportunities, empowerment of local communities, improved access to social amenities, markets and potable water supplies and safer and permanent access to arable land and social infrastructures by the provision of land titles and the implementation of mine risk reduction programmes.
Other achievements during the year include:
- taking up membership of Business in the Community and CARES programmes in Leeds and London. The networking and support opportunities of BitC membership are already bearing fruit in the CSR policy setting within the Group and the CARES programmes will afford the Group a small element of structure to its good-works programmes on which it should be able to build in future years; and
- the launch of WYG's Community Engagement Pack which is being included in new starter induction packs and will be distributed to all staff during the coming year. The Pack contains useful guidance on how to identify, resource and implement local community engagement opportunities and the support for such activities available from the Group.
The focus of the CSR Steering Group in the current year will be on widening and deepening Group engagement with local communities wherever WYG works.