My name is Paul Youden and my wife is Renate and the last few years have been fairly traumatic,
she has terminal lung cancer and obviously the situation has got worse, particularly
in the last nine months. Being a carer, being a full time carer is
very difficult. You do what you do because it’s the right and proper thing to do. But
people unless they’ve been in this position have no idea how waring it is. It’s 24/7.
Fresh air is very important with her condition so whenever it’s possible we get her sitting
out there but I’m sure going through her mind is the mess compared to how it used to be.
Corporate volunteering is super, I didn’t
know it existed until it was brought to my attention and there are these people out there
who are prepared to help cases like ourselves and it’s just wonderful.
Paul Fraser: So the corporate volunteering programme happens so that we can give employees and staff at
our corporate partners a real insight in to Macmillan’s work and to provide something
above and beyond fundraising as a way to get involved in the partnership with us.
Today we are taking part in a Paint & Fix activity for Travis Perkins and Benchmarx
and the Paint & Fix is a way to get staff and employees across all levels to meet people
affected by cancer and to give them everyday support to help them tidy up their garden
or fix up a room or some renovation work they might need doing in their houses that they’re
not able to carry out themselves. The corporate volunteering programme works
by firstly our team, our Corporate Volunteering Team, getting in touch with the partner and
we work out what particular skill sets that they have and what they might be able to offer
us and we look across the organisation, across the breadth of where we work and the services
that we deliver to see what needs doing and then we look at how we can match those two things up.
Ruth: For us today we’ve got our commercial team
here, which is the team that I’m in and it’s a great day for us to do some team
building, staff engagement, just getting to know each other in a different situation to
work and not being in the office so really, really good for staff morale as well.
Richard: It’s just an excellent team building opportunity for us to get out in to the community and
do something together and build that camaraderie amongst the team because normally we just
see each other when we’re in the office or at our PC’s so it’s great to be out
doing something on a much more personal level like this with the rest of the team.
Ruth: You just get to see the impact as soon as it’s done and we’ll be able to leave seeing
that Renate got her garden as she wanted it and how it used to be for her.
Paul Youden: It’s very important from a public perception; it’s not just having a company that will
sell their product at the trade counter or whatever. To be part of the community and
to offer something as a company back in to the community I think that’s splendid.
It's not just down to PR it’s down to that company wanting to do something for the community.
Richard: We got involved today by speaking to our charity champion at Benchmarx and asking for opportunities
where we could dedicate some of our time to helping the community on a little project
like this but there’s lots of different ways, you can speak to your CSR team, you
can speak to your charity champion at your business or your partnership manager at Macmillan
or of course just check out their website. There are lots of opportunities for you to
get involved in projects like these and do any little you can to help.