Our partnership with Mind UK

When we embarked on our partnership with leading UK mental health charity Mind UK in 2018, we set ourselves a £200,000 target, with all money raised going to support their Peer-to-Peer Support Service, which aims to empower people to use their own mental health experiences to help others either online or in a group setting, and includes a range of mental health boosting activities such as crafts, walking or meeting for coffee.

Across our sites, we’ve worked hard to raise as much as we can for Mind UK through a combination of colleague-led fundraising initiatives, such as summer barbecues, seasonal raffles, fun runs, bake sales and our site-based donation stations where colleagues can donate clothing and homeware to be sold in Mind UK shops.

This year, our colleagues have come up with fresh fundraising ideas and events, such as a Sports Day at our St Albans office, World Mental Health Day, Miles for Mental Health month in September and matched fundraising in March. With the amazing participation of each site, and the dedication of our network of Charity Champions, we have managed to reach our target of £200,000. We’re incredibly proud of all our colleagues for helping us achieve this fantastic amount.

When we partnered with Mind UK, we also wanted to use the collaboration to raise awareness of the importance of good mental health, to reduce the stigma around this topic within the workplace, and to help any of our own colleagues struggling with mental health problems. As signatories of the ‘Time to Change’ pledge, we have encouraged conversations around mental well-being and supported our colleagues with training in this area. This proved crucial in supporting our colleagues during the challenging Covid-19 lockdown where we were able to share tips and videos too boost moral and leveraged our network of Mental Health First Aiders.

In addition, this year we partnered with an independent Employee Assistance Programme, ‘Lifeworks’, which gives our colleagues free access to a confidential support service designed both to encourage mental wellbeing and to provide support with many of life’s challenges from physical ill health and depression, to a family bereavement or financial concerns.

Our partnership with Together for Short Lives

As our partnership with Mind UK concludes in May 2020, our Charity Champions have been busy selecting our new charity partner for the next two years. We are very excited to announce that we will be supporting Together For Short Lives, the leading UK charity for children and young people with life-threatening and life-limiting conditions, and their families. Together for Short Lives provides a lifeline for those who care for seriously ill children and represents the 54 children’s hospice services across the UK. We’ll be working in partnership for two years to provide much-needed funds to hospices that are local to our sites, ensuring families in our nearby communities are supported and have access to the very best care that is available.

Supporting our industry

We continue to support GroceryAid, an industry charity set up to make life better for grocery people in need and are very proud to maintain our gold level supporter status for the second year running – the highest level available.

Critical to this ongoing success, is our representation on both GroceryAid’s President and Southern Network Committees, as well as our dedicated network of Charity Champions who are able to engage our wider colleague population in supporting fundraising activities and spreading the word about the charity’s purpose, projects and support services. Over the last 12 months, as well as celebrating GroceryAid’s annual Awareness Day and promoting the Charity through several internal communication campaigns, our Charity Champions also helped coordinate a series of fundraising activities, from quizzes to raffles and spin classes. In addition, as a business we support GroceryAid’s own calendar of fundraising events through paid participation and through our colleagues volunteering their time. This included their touch Rugby tournament, Barcode Festival and annual carol concert.

Support local charities

Our colleagues are passionate about supporting their local communities and this year they have chosen to support projects such as Wirral Mind, Incubabies, St Albans Food Bank , Earthworks, LOROS – Leicester Hospice, Young Carers Bucks, St Albans Scouts, Launceston Road Runners, Devon branch of Butterfly Conservation and Haematology Cancer Care. Supporting local causes enables our colleagues to make a visible difference within their local community and we find this a powerful tool in bringing both our people and communities together.