At Time & Talents we are proud of our record in the Westminster community. All of our projects are set up and managed by us from start to finish, and deliver consistently high standards of support to those in need. Here you can find more information about some of our recent work. Below we showcase the eight main benefits that organisations can gain from partnering with us.
When the COVID-19 crisis started, One Westminster very quickly set up the Wellbeing Chat Service, a telephone service available to anyone in need in the community to help them cope at this time of emergency. As well as organising emergency food, shopping and medical prescription deliveries for more than 500 people who were shielding, this service provided a weekly 30 minute call for a friendly chat to nearly 200 older isolated people in the borough.
Some 80 volunteers made 4,000 weekly check-in and chat calls to lonely residents offering regular social contact and to ensure that all necessary support was ongoing. That’s an incredible 120,000 minutes of care time!
It is amazing how just half an hour a week can provide life-saving support to the most vulnerable and isolated members of the community.
The Wellbeing Chat Service continues to support people in need alongside One Westminster’s other three projects that also need volunteers who can spare time each week for a call:
You can volunteer from the comfort of your home and make a huge difference by helping these services that are a lifeline for many.
We also have a range of other micro-volunteering activities that aim to make an impact in the areas of education, employment, health and wellbeing, social engagement, and fundraising.
You can choose to volunteer individually or in teams, to share your own personal knowledge or your specialist skills and bring much needed help to local small charities in these difficult times. Contact us for a chat and to receive more details by emailing the Time & Talents team.
In these challenging times, Time & Talents has developed a remote volunteering programme for all employees who are working from home so that they can support charities remotely with their professional skills and help the most vulnerable in the community.
In just a few hours, professional volunteers can provide crucial support to all types of charities, whether individually or as part of a small team with work colleagues. Here are a few examples of the ways our volunteers have been of assistance in the last few months:
Request the latest Remote Volunteering Opportunities List here and get involved!
Together our collective efforts have the power to bring about long-lasting change."
Time & Talents team
We love volunteers who want to share their skills, everyone can make a difference to the local community. Whether volunteering as an individual or part of a team, employees can contribute professional skills developed through their careers or skills learned through personal interests.
In recent years Time & Talents has provided key support for charity staff, in the form of peer mentors, training workshops and trusteeships. For example, employee volunteers from financial software company Intuit shared their expertise with charity staff and volunteers by running a training session on Quickbooks. And employees from chocolate manufacturer, Godiva, provided workshops on how to use Excel for charity monitoring and reporting.
Employee-led workshops have also benefitted many local schools and colleges. Volunteers ran a variety of classroom sessions tailored to their interests and work experience and the learning objectives of the school, which resulted in strong outcomes.
Our volunteers also work directly with disadvantaged members of the community on issues such as unemployment, isolation and literacy. Employee volunteers enjoy contributing to digital inclusion by running IT support sessions for older people. Also making a high impact are employability sessions where volunteers support people getting back into work by helping them with their CV and practising interview skills, and offer career advice to students and six-formers.
Since 2016 when the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) was created from the merger of two other government departments, employees have benefitted from volunteering in team building activities. The number of volunteers participating increased tremendously and last year 247 employees at BEIS gave 1,072 hours of their time to support more than 2,000 community members in Westminster.
The sheer number of volunteers that BEIS can mobilise offers invaluable support to community organisations, particularly as third sector resources and funding dwindle. A large team will take only a few hours to complete a task requiring many pairs of hands, allowing charity staff to focus on the important work of supporting people.
In turn, volunteering together in a variety of practical activities helped BEIS staff develop stronger relationships with their colleagues.
The day was really well organised and it felt like we were doing a really valuable task. Seeing how happy the organisation was after our work was completed really brought home how much of a positive impact volunteering can have."
BEIS volunteer
For a number of years now volunteers from John Lewis, Westminster City Council and the department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy have teamed up with Westminster City School to support their year 7 pupils (aged 11 to 12) as reading mentors. These students arrive at the school with vastly differing levels of literacy, so this reading mentoring scheme aims to help them get to the level of their peers. Such support at the earliest stage of a student's secondary school career has a proven impact on later academic development. Among developed nations, the UK shows the clearest link between poor literacy and unemployment. The help that employee volunteers have given them will directly influence and contribute to the students' future achievements for many years to come.
I enjoyed the reading session and I have gained more confidence in my other lessons. My favourite book is Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone; my mentor would be Professor McGonagall because she likes cats."
Elliott - student, Westminster City School reading mentee
The reading mentoring programme was a great success. Our pupils enjoyed reading and discussing their books with the engaging and friendly mentors. I saw them improve their comprehension and grow in confidence reading aloud."
Chris Chapman, Library Manager, Westminster City School
Time & Talents can tailor your employee volunteering to correlate directly with your business goals. For example, the Godiva Chocolatier company’s main focus last year was to support ‘women in the community’ as part of its annual ‘Godiva Gives’ project. We therefore organised plenty of volunteering opportunities at a range of women’s projects. Godiva teams prepared healthy snacks for a women’s group, painted and gardened for older women residents at a housing cooperative, as well as helping older women at a community hub use their mobile phones and tablets more effectively. Similarly, volunteers from file hosting service Dropbox wanted to celebrate International Women’s Day with a bake-off with the women at a local nursing home. We were happy to arrange it!
Another recent example of matching corporate social responsibility (CSR) goals with employee volunteering activities was a volunteer day for a media company, the Engine Group. One of the main CSR priorities for this firm is the environment, so we scheduled its volunteering day to take place on World Environmental Day. A team of 15 Engine volunteers spruced up the gardens at a dementia centre and planted new flowers in hanging baskets.
Employee volunteers often help out at projects directly supporting service users, thereby gaining great insight into the challenges faced. From tea dances for older people to IT support at a day centre, there’s always a project needing direct support. Volunteering at soup kitchens or foodbanks provides the chance of distributing food directly to people who struggle to afford everyday meals.
Corporate volunteering makes double the impact when matched by corporate giving. For example, Christmas 2019 was made very special for a group of 20 people at a learning disability project. The business consultancy Newton Europe sponsored the project’s Christmas lunch and employee volunteers helped the group go to the restaurant and had a fun afternoon singing along with the karaoke.
Earlier this year, a team of 15 employee volunteers from private equity company CAIN International transformed the residents’ hall of a Pimlico hostel into a warm and welcoming space for all by redecorating it and sponsoring the purchase of all painting materials.
Time &Talents teamed up with the Pacific Investment Management Company (PIMCO) back in 2012 and have since worked closely with them to orchestrate their annual global volunteering month, helping their London-based staff to support Westminster-based organisations.
During last year’s volunteering month, Time & Talents supported several hundred PIMCO employees to volunteer for more than 20 projects. These included serving breakfast, painting, delivering skilled workshops on employability and digital inclusion support, as well as playing with children who attend the Portman Early Childhood Centre.
The Time & Talents team has been instrumental in connecting PIMCO with local charities and identifying engagement opportunities that have made a significant impact to the local community.”
Carolina Leite, Senior Associate, Corporate Responsibility Purpose PIMCO
Below please find reference copies of this year's and earlier impact reports.