Volunteering 2025

After it was announced that Integrated Skills would become an EO, we scrambled to get an understanding of what that meant. Apart from a couple of legal requirements, the canvas was blank. Speaking to other EOs it became clear that there is no specific format to it.

We decided to set up a quarterly forum, a bit of a Town Hall event where everyone would join and submit proposals or raise queries with regard to Employee Ownership. If a proposal was practical, affordable and supported by a majority of the team, it would be put forward to the management board for consideration.

During one of our first EO forums, one of our team members suggested introducing a Volunteering Day. An opportunity to give something back to our local communities but not at the expense of our well-earned annual leave. Many of our team had already offered their time and expertise in charitable circumstances.

This was hastily passed up the chain of command and swiftly authorised.

So, armed with approval and buckets of enthusiasm, our teams began scouring charity, non-profit and local government websites to find volunteering opportunities. Independently, our Leeds and Melton Mowbray teams sought projects where they could volunteer as a group. In 2023, the Leeds team helped rebuild a bridge on Otley Chevin with Leeds City Council Countryside Rangers and our Melton Team joined the Leicester City Council Park Rangers clearing overgrown vegetation and maintaining a habitat for bees and other wildlife.

Skip forward to 2025, and both teams once again found group activities to engage in, and even more coincidentally, on the same day!

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Our Leeds team met with Toby, a ranger from Wade’s Rangers, a charity associated with Leeds City Council at Gotts Mansion in Armley. They would then tackle an overgrown garden, sow new seed, plant new bulbs and clear any waste that had been tipped in the area.

Toby has a vast, deep understanding of horticulture and shared valuable insights with the team throughout the exercise about when and where different plants grow best.

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Our Melton Mowbray went out with Leicester City Council, Parks and Open Spaces Team.  We took a boat through a few locks and out to near Thurcaston Road Bridge, then worked back along the canal towards Abbey Park.  Along the way catching floating litter and pulling out rubbish caught in the vegetation alongside the water.  Anything organic such as coconuts, pineapples and other religious offerings were left as they will naturally decompose.  There was an awful lot of drinks bottles and cans, and numerous plastic bags to be collected. Unusually this stretch of canal is the responsibility of the council to keep clean. Whilst making our way back to Abbey Park, our starting point we saw Moor Hens with chicks and a pair of Swans amongst the usual ducks.