Employees from Santander's Cornwall Street branch in Birmingham recently spent the day at Birmingham City Mission helping to refurbish its homeless centre for local residents.
The activity, which was part of the bank's Discovery Days scheme, saw 17 volunteers help refurbish rooms at the centre that will be used to host activities and enable local homeless people to speak in confidence with counsellors. The team stripped and painted the walls and carried out tasks such as moving metal shelving.
The Birmingham City Mission has offered food, friendship and support to homeless people in Birmingham since 1966. The centre provides food, workshops and teaches valuable skills to vulnerable and marginalised people around the city. The newly renovated care centre, located on Washington Street, is due to open this month.
Derek Duke, Personnel and Volunteer Manager at Birmingham City Mission, said: "I would like to extend my personal thanks to the cheerful, enthusiastic Santander volunteers. We’re incredibly grateful for the work they completed; they did a fantastic job helping us refurbish our centre in preparation for the reopening."
Sabrina Mahmood, Corporate Banking Risks Graduate at Santander's branch on Cornwall Street, said: "It felt great being able to give something back to our community. We chose the centre as we knew we could make a difference, which became very evident once we’d finished our work. It was satisfying to be able to exceed the charity’s expectations and make such good progress with our tasks."
Santander's Discovery Days scheme encourages staff to take a day out of the office to volunteer with a local cause. Last year over 3,900 members of staff took part in more than 360 projects across the country, including refurbishing local schools, hospitals and helping with community projects.
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For More Information:
Antonia Green
Citigate Dewe Rogerson
020 7282 2967
antonia.green@citigatedr.co.uk
Twitter: @santanderuk
Notes to Editors:
Santander Community
The Discovery Project, launched in January 2016, is Santander’s new flagship community programme that aims to build skills, grow knowledge and support innovation to help people have confidence in the future. Santander’s current community programmes including MoneyWise, WorkWise and Discovery Days have been brought together with new initiatives including a schools programme called FutureWise, and Discovery Lab events. Together with The Discovery Foundation and Santander Universities, over £20 million will be invested in good causes in 2016. Over the next five years the bank aims to benefit one million people in local communities through the programme.
Santander UK is a financial services provider in the UK that offers a wide range of personal and commercial financial products and services. It has brought real competition to the UK, through its 1|2|3 products for retail customers and relationship banking model for UK SMEs. As at 31 December 2015, Santander UK was one of the most switched to banks. The bank serves more than 14 million active customers with c. 20,000 employees and operates through 857 branches and 70 regional Corporate Business Centres. Santander UK is subject to the full supervision of the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) and Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA) in the UK. Santander UK plc customers are protected by the Financial Services Compensation Scheme (FSCS) in the UK.