Community support
Rentokil Initial’s approach to the community consists of three separate approaches.
The first is charitable cash donations, which tends to be made at a central or divisional level. These donations can be linked to matched-giving to support employees’ own locally based fund raising for charities and voluntary groups.
The second is community support, which tends to be a combination of value in kind donations, often linked to employee volunteering activities, which may in themselves relate to fund raising, with possible matched giving. This support tends to be undertaken at a country level.
The third relates to community investment. This approach tends to be determined at a country or divisional level, and is likely to be a combination of financial support, operational or marketing support (such as cause related marketing) and employee volunteering.
The company’s community support and investment is focused locally or divisionally rather than centrally driven. The selection of which community scheme to support is often selected by employees. Their active participation is particularly important.
Individual community activities are led by the management of each business (either on a local business or divisional basis). In most instances, the selection of which community activity should be supported is based upon those communities where the local business operates and where employees live and work.
Applications for community support should be sent in writing to your local Rentokil Initial business or centrally through the Contact us page on this website
Around The World Our Colleagues and Businesses Actively Support Local Charities
The following represent the highlights of the community initiatives undertaken in each division. There are many others. These may be relatively small activities, but whose impact can be quite large for those members of the community that are beneficiaries.
Ambius
In Auckland, New Zealand the Ambius branch is a supporter of the Starship Children’s Hospital, the only specialist paediatric hospital in the country. Its support is by way of supplying and maintaining plants, which help create a soothing, restful atmosphere for the children who are the patients and their families visiting them.
In Australia, Ambius has created a cause related marketing scheme to support the Rainforest Rescue (itself described in more detail later under the Asia Pacific division). The scheme is based on a new Australian rainforest range of plants. When customers choose to rent any of these plants, Ambius makes a contribution towards Rainforest Rescue to help protect the unique Daintree area in North Queensland.
City Link
City Link’s community work is often locally focused. One example is that of its Norwich depot, which bought four new life jackets for the Palling Volunteer Rescue Service Appeal, at a cost of £700 (equivalent to about a year’s worth of the service’s own street collections).This is a lifeboat service which has served this coastal resort in Norfolk for almost 160 years. The donation was made following a request by an employee who has been a local lifeboat volunteer in Sea Palling for more than two years. In an example of value in kind donations, the business was supporter of the leading wish granting charity, Make-A-Wish Foundation.
Similar support was provided by the business to the UK’s first ever “National Family Week”, which held the world’s biggest picnic in May. The business distributed all the official promotional goods free of charge across the width and breadth of the country.
In an example of employee led fundraising, a charity rugby match in aid of the Pancreatic Cancer Research Fund was organised by one of City Link’s senior executives, who plays for Alcester Rugby club. The match between Team City Link and the Alcester XV featured rugby legends such as former England International Dean Richards MBE and ex-Gloucester prop Andy Deacon. The match raised nearly £2,000 for the charity in memory of one of City Link’s colleagues who had died from the disease in 2008.
Initial Facilities Services
Lancaster Cleaning, through its Academy, works with Tomorrow’s People, whose objective is to support the long-term unemployed of London, offering practical training solutions and support to those who until now, have thought they were unable to get employment. Over a period of 3 months, its Academy has successfully trained approximately 175 long-term unemployed and provided suitable employment within Lancaster Cleaning contracts across the City and Canary Wharf to 45 of them. As a result of the strength of the relationship, Tomorrow’s People nominated Lancaster for the Employer of the Year category of the London European Social Fund (ESF) Awards 2009, where it was awarded a runner-up position from a total of 75 entries.
Rentokil
JC Ehrlich, the North American business, has made commitments of donations amounting to about $30,000 over the next few years to around 8 local charities. This is in addition to the business’s local sponsorship of children’s sports teams. In addition, the division’s marketing team participated in the Give and Gain Day (Business in the Community’s annual employee volunteering event). By organising (and contributing) for a dress down day, they raised over £200 to support Millpond Primary School with the provision of an outdoor reading area and vegetable garden.
Asia Pacific, Africa and the Middle East
Rentokil in India is providing expert support to the Green School project. This project aims to engage school children in a greener and cleaner environment. The project involves schools forming teams for projects targeting energy efficiency, water efficiency, green house keeping, integrated pest management etc.
Each team comprises both students and experts from the field. Rentokil’s support involves guiding school children in their projects on topics such as integrated pest management and helping in the implementation of initiatives to make areas pest-free.
In addition, the business is organising pest awareness programmes - called the Pest Detective - for school children in India. The children are shown symptoms of pest existence. On judging the pests with the symptoms shown, the children are rewarded with the UNO cards - a card game played with a specially printed deck.
In South Africa, much of its community focus has been on supporting employees and their relatives who have been afflicted by HIV/Aids. One of its first community activities was to support the starting up of the Thusanang Development Centre by providing a 2.1 acre property on a free of charge basis. This centre’s beneficiaries belong to the large community of squatters in Olivienhoutbosch, where HIV/Aids affect the ability of families to work and survive. The activities at the centre include agriculture (growing spinach, breeding chickens for the community and preparing compost from Ambius waste), a kitchen feeding scheme, computer literacy training, and training for manicures and facials, together with an employment recruitment drive.
From the community investment in Thusanang, evolved the Zenzeleni Trust. This is a colleague based initiative, whose objective is to provide funds for beneficiaries, who may be any colleague, or child or adult dependant of a colleague, requiring financial assistance as a direct result of HIV/Aids or an HIV/Aids related illness. Membership amounts to over one third of the business’s colleagues, who contribute monthly to the Trust, but all the colleagues support it in its fundraising. These activities are organised by HIV/Aids Champions who are located in every operation in the business, and whose role (in addition to organising fundraising) is to liaise with any colleagues that need support.
In Australia, the businesses have a continuing relationship with the Daintree Rainforest Rescue Sponsorship Programme in Queensland, Australia. Their programme is designed to have long-term positive environmental benefits and could be linked to the community and its customers. It started with their “buy back and protect forever” of a 17,500 square metre block of rainforest with a cash donation and a wide range of initiatives, involving customers and employees.
Support continues with both corporate giving, customer communications and cause related initiatives (such as the Ambius range of rainforest plants referred to earlier), as well as employee volunteering.
Supporting Communities in South Africa Thusanang Development Centre and The Zenzelini Trust
Our South African business first became involved with the Thusanang development centre in 2005 when it donated the use of a 21-acre property in Blue Hills to develop projects to respond to the community’s specific needs. The main beneficiaries are the large community of squatters in Olivienhoutbosch.
Designed to empower and transfer skills to 30 African beneficiaries per quarter, the centre has four major goals:
- Encourage individuals to take responsibility for the improvement of their community;
- Recognize the dignity and value of all useful occupations;
- Mobilize self help activities and collective work to improve the quality of life;
- Encourage the development of human potential to its fullest, within the context of the local culture and community.
To achieve the above objectives, the centre runs a number of activities, including:
- Care and welfare, including providing day care and after care centres and a people with Aids project
- Skills development, including agricultural training, computer literacy courses, sewing and bead making and pottery
In recognition of the long term commitment and involvement of our South African business in this project, the business was recently presented with a Merit Award Certificate for Devoted and Unselfish “Service above Self” to the Community from the Rotary Club of Midrand, Gauteng.
Alongside the success of this project, our colleagues in South Africa established The Zenzeleni Trust to provide support and benefit HIV/Aids infected or affected colleagues. The business provided an initial seed corn donation and now the Trust receives a monthly donation from over 330 colleagues within the South African business.
In an effort to assist colleagues at “grass roots” level, thirty-four volunteers offered their services as Champions and received training at HIV/Aids workshops. The aim is for these volunteers to assist HIV/Aids affected and infected colleagues in whatever way possible, on a totally confidential basis. In addition, these Champions have received a three day training course, covering many aspects relating to HIV/Aids, including role-play workshops dealing with counselling techniques.
Mission Clean Hands
In 2008, Initial Textiles and Washroom Services division launched a major campaign on sanitation across Europe in conjunction with the United Nations’ Water Supply and Sanitation Collaborative Council (WSSCC). The “Hands on Hygiene” campaign was developed to support the UN’s International Year of Sanitation.
As part of the campaign, the business has entered into a longer term partnership with international charity Save the Children.
In 2009, the first joint project was to support a school in the Ivory Coast. Most schools in this country suffer from lack of sanitary facilities, often because of conflicts which have left them damaged or destroyed. The four month project, at a school in Abengourou (already rehabilitated by Save the Children), resulted in the school being provided with one new functional latrine with six cabins for girls and boys, one new water point and one new point for hand washing. In addition the school received supplies of soap and a Hygiene Committee was established to ensure children learn about hygienic behaviour and develop new habits.
During the year, in an initiative covering all its worldwide businesses, the division wanted to bring the importance of hygiene home to 8-11 year old school children in a more effective manner particularly given the spread of swine flu. It launched “Mission Clean Hands” – a web site aimed at providing education on bacteria and the importance of hand washing in a fun but serious way - www.missioncleanhands.com.
Save the Children was very supportive of this initiative. Every business received relevant support from the division, including the web site in seven local languages, templates for collateral such as a poster, door hanger & sticker, a press release in English for local translation, and a direct contact with its local office of Save the Children to review appropriate cooperation in the rollout.
In New Zealand, as part of its “Mission Clean Hands” programme, the business sponsored 30 schools with around 10,000 students. These schools received hand sanitisers, posters promoting Mission Clean Hands, and also competitions (covering essay, poster art and colouring-in) all themed around hand hygiene and Mission Clean Hands. Winning students received iPods. This programme was linked to the start of Foodsafe Week, and the programme was launched by New Zealand’s Food Safety Minister.
The business continued its “Mission Cleans Hands” programme in support of the annual Global Handwashing Day (15th October, 2009), and local New Zealand colleagues actively undertook fund raising activities for Save the Children around this day.