We have just had Easter which is traditionally a time for renewal and rebirth. Spring is truly here, and the dark days of Winter are behind us. Yet we all know this year life is harder for many.
According to the Joseph Rowntree Foundation more than one in five of the UK population now lives in poverty whilst child poverty continues to rise with nearly a third of all children in the UK now living in poverty. These figures are only set to get worse in the very near future.
These are harsh statistics and difficult to digest. As a result, we have recently formed our new Community Action Group (CAG) at Myers Clark, formed from a cross-section of volunteer team members.
The objective of the CAG was split in two parts as set out by our directors:
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Community work with local charities
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Driving forward our sustainable journey
Community work with local charities
We are addressing four key areas this year as follows:
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Having a food bank at work whereby we can collect items for our nominated food bank and help to alleviate food poverty in the community.
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- We have decided on the Watford Food Bank (part of the Trussell Trust)
- We are in contact with them to find out what donations they need and will be sending out an appeal to our staff and of course the firm will contribute too.
- We will get in touch with you as well each month via Twitter and LinkedIn and you are welcome to bring any items to the office if you happen to visit us.
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Working with local homeless charities
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- We are looking for a group in the Watford area that helps deliver food/clothes etc to the homeless. If you know of any such groups, please can you let us know? We would love to join in and help deliver food, clothes, toiletries etc to the homeless or needy in our local area.
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Working with and helping our nominated charity
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- Herts Mind is our nominated charity for 2022 and 2023. This is a very worthy charity providing mental health support across our county. Again, we are currently speaking to them to see where they need us to help.
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Supporting a local school which is struggling with resources
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- We have identified The Orchard Primary School in Gammons Lane as the school where we will help. We have been in touch and will be looking at working with them to help the youngest in our community.
Driving our sustainable journey
Our main objective remains to carry on reducing our carbon footprint. For a few years now we have been working paperless where possible. You will have noticed that we have been pushing to exchange information with you digitally via our secure portal. We are sending your accounts, tax returns and even payslips where we process the payroll over to you in a digital format.
Our group came up with other suggestions that we can adopt quickly and that will make a small difference to our emissions.
- We all turn off the monitors when we finish for the day.
- We only boil water we need in the kettle.
- We do not use small portable electric heaters.
- We all need to print even less on paper.
- We don’t send unnecessary emails.
- Our paper waste continues to be recycled.
- There will be a recycle point for all our used tea bags as we use a lot of these!!
We at Myers Clark want to give something back to the community we work in and support them in the best way we can. We would love it if you as our clients and contacts are able to join with us where possible.
These are our initial plans, but we are very much open to suggestions from our clients. If you feel that there are worthwhile causes out there that perhaps we should look into please get in touch. Send us an email with your ideas to priyar@myersclark.co.uk and we will look into them.