Helping our communities this Christmas

Throughout this difficult year, we’ve maintained our support for our local communities. Our Covid-19 community fund has now given over £400,000 of financial support to our charity partners to enable them to run their services. This includes investing in our employment and education programmes, which we’ve largely continued virtually, to keep up important support for people facing barriers in our communities. This includes young people, ex-offenders and people experiencing homelessness. Our colleagues have also generously donated to our charity partners following the hotly-anticipated release of our internal band’s Christmas single.
 
We’ve also continued to use our spaces to support our charity partners around the UK, including those delivering our community employment programmes like Circle Collective in Lewisham Shopping Centre, where their new HQ has opened last week. Piccadilly Lights has also played a huge role this year, raising awareness of important social issues and public health initiatives.

In addition, our teams have continued successful community activities over Christmas, enabling our customers to donate and raising awareness for charities. This includes our toy appeal at St David’s in Cardiff.
 
At The Galleria we’re coordinating a local Hatfield Foodbank provision for The Trussell Trust, which will continue into the New Year to provide food to vulnerable people. We’re also supporting local hospitals and Willow, a charity who help terminally ill young people.

The team at Clarks Village has been working on their ‘Share the Love’ campaign, as a Giving Tree alternative to enable their customers to support local charities. They have also started working with Key4Life, our charity partner who help young men at risk of offending into work in Somerset and London.

Giving tree

I began mentoring at The Cardinal Hume Centre, one of our charity partners in Victoria, earlier this year. I worked with my mentee to establish their areas of interest and the sorts of roles they should be looking to apply to. I also offered feedback on their CV and supported them during their interviews."

Jibran Saleem

Brand Acquisition Manager

We’d like to say a massive well done and thank you to all our teams who provide amazing support to our local communities all year round, and in particular for going the extra mile this year.