We announced last month that we were entering into a corporate partnership with one of the UK’s leading homelessness charities, St Mungo’s.
So how did our relationship with St Mungo’s begin?
When some of our clients and colleagues were finding rough sleepers outside of the buildings we service, they were unsure of how best to help. We began our search for a charity that would work with us to provide real help, and that’s when we came across St Mungo’s.
St Mungo’s stood out as an organisation that would help the people we encountered to find safety, and actively engaged with us to offer meaningful support to those we met.
We quickly found that our company values were closely aligned. With caring and making a difference guiding both of our organisations, we became a corporate supporter in 2018.
Since then we’ve seen that in this role we’ve been able to make a big impact on our communities’ and clients’ understanding and awareness of homelessness, and better the lives of those in need.
We wanted to expand the opportunities open to us and our clients through St Mungo’s activity programmes and moved to become a corporate partner earlier this year.
What do St Mungo’s do?
Each night, the work of St Mungo’s means that almost 3,000 people have a bed, and somewhere warm to stay. Providing support with wellbeing, accommodation, employment and training, their clients develop employability skills to improve their independence and confidence. This offers meaningful support, giving them the skills to rebuild their lives. Consequently, they are able to get off the streets and into somewhere that offers safety and stability for the long-term.
Why is St Mungo’s the right fit for us?
We relish any opportunity to lend a hand to our local communities in any way we can. This partnership opens up opportunities for us to create social value supporting our purpose of creating better places. Through financial commitment, fundraising and volunteering, we hope that in collaboration with St Mungo’s, we can help to end homelessness.
St Mungo’s also provide specialist Homelesswise Training for businesses, empowering people to offer practical help to rough sleepers they find. This teaches colleagues how to manage homelessness, including what to do if they see someone sleeping in a doorway near their workplace. This in turn lets us provide training content to our own clients and colleagues around homelessness, should they want it. With this being a common issue in the UK, we’re pleased that through this partnership we can help. We want to offer our clients a solution, while helping those that are rough sleeping to find shelter.
This all ties in to our strategy to Create Better Places, for Everyone, Every day. It’s this that makes St Mungo’s our perfect corporate partner, and we look forward to creating a better future, together.
