Volunteers from Nottingham’s intu Broadmarsh and intu Victoria Centre swapped their uniforms for paintbrushes to help give Clifton Playing Fields a spruce up as part of Give and Gain Day on Friday 15th May.
Staff from both centres were given the opportunity to take a break from their usual working week to give their time to help perform much-needed maintenance at the park as part of the volunteering initiative run by Business in the Community.
Jane Fewkes is guest services manager at intu Victoria Centre and was one of the staff that took part and said that it was a great experience and gave people the chance to get to know one another better.
She said: “This gave us a fantastic opportunity to build relationships with our colleagues across both centres that we don’t see every day, and a platform for building ‘team intu spirit’.
“The team leaders we appointed on the day don’t do that in their usual work roles, and the managers present on the day weren’t managing the project in any way. We were all one and the same, shared the workload, worked together well, each contributing whilst still having fun.
“Towards the end of the day, we had thought we wouldn’t be able to finish on time, but we pulled together and rose to the challenge to finish what we’d set out to do.
“It was really satisfying to have achieved something together and united as a team – and everyone felt like we’d done something quite special.”
The 14 volunteers spent the day helping to give the external fences at the popular playing fields a new look with a fresh lick of paint – something that might not have been possible without them.
Amy Dibble, marketing communications manager at both centres, said: “Our relationship with Business in the Community has meant we’ve been able to offer our staff the opportunity to do some volunteering as part of their job roles, and we were delighted with the response.
“It was brilliant to be able to bring together staff from across our two centres, many of whom didn’t really know each other before, to do something to help within our local community and bring them together as a team.
“The staff who took part really enjoyed the day and will no doubt be encouraging their colleagues to take part in opportunities we are able to offer in the future. Giving something back to the community is really important to intu and by undertaking projects like this, we are able to do that.”
Give and Gain Day celebrates the power of the employee volunteering in local communities and helps to support organisations across the UK and globally and recorded its biggest year yet in 2015, with more than 15,500 business volunteers giving some 109,000 hours of volunteering time on the day – worth nearly £2m and helping thousands and people across the UK.
