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How we are giving back

Engaging with our communities through colleague volunteering and charitable giving is an important part of our culture, and our colleagues are encouraged to use their time and skills for volunteering, fundraising for charity and helping people fulfil their potential.

Cape Town colleagues in partnership with Greenpops Fynbos for the Future project

Around 300 colleagues volunteered nearly 1,300 hours to a variety of projects and 46 colleagues gave nearly 300 hours to environmental activities.  

More than £177,000 was donated to many causes, nearly £78,000 of which was raised by colleagues, through a wide range of activities and UK Give As You Earn, with £7,000 added from matched funding.  

We partner with educational charities locally and internationally, and our colleagues are encouraged to fundraise, support and volunteer with them. During 2021-22 colleagues supported a huge range of registered charities. They continue to be imaginative and generous in their support for their communities and good causes.

We also support local causes handpicked by our colleagues. We worked with our main UK charity partners for three years (2019–22) which were: Blue Smile, Castle School, Coventry and Warwickshire Mind, Shine Trust and SOS Children’s International Villages. We donated to the Cambridge Refugee Resettlement Campaign, to support research of language needs and preferred mode of access, as well as the recruitment of experienced teachers.  

 

As an organisation, we help people fulfil their potential. We do that through our products and services and also through the actions of our colleagues.


 

Other UK charities we supported this year include:

 

Albert Kennedy Trust Cystic Fibrosis
Alzheimers Research UK Disasters Emergency Committee
Alzheimers Society Embrace Child Victims of Crime
Beat! Kaleidoscope Trust
British Red Cross LawWorks
Cambridge United Youth and Community Trust National Deaf Children’s Society
Cambridge Aid Rainbow Trust
Cancer Research UK Shelter

 

Picture of India colleagues working in their local community

 

International charities supported included: 

 

Indigenous Literacy Foundation in Australia Salle Playa del Carmen and Salle Ayahualulco schools in Mexico
Ação da Cidadania and Grupo Amar in Brazil SPARK! in the Philippines
Gully Ruggers Foundation’s Yellow Streets initiative GreenPop, Beautiful Gate Ministries International and Red Cross After Care programme in South Africa
17000ft Foundation, Scope for Change and Bal Raksha Bharat (Save the Children) in India Operation Backpack, Pencil and United Way of Kentucky in the US

 

The appetite for volunteering and fundraising keeps growing and it’s exciting to consider what this will help us achieve in the years ahead.

Book donations 

We work with partners to get books into communities that otherwise would struggle to access them. Since we became Cambridge University Press & Assessment in August 2021, nearly 172,000 books were donated to a wide range of causes internationally, including Scope for Change in India, LGBT Books to Prisoners, The Tranzmission Prison Project in the US and the South African Department of Basic Education, which supported people impacted by the devastating KwaZulul Natal floods.

 

Local school children on World Book Day in our offices in Cambridge

Work placements  

Equal access to opportunity is one of the most pressing issues young people face, and we believe we have a responsibility to help address this. We work in our local communities to offer work placements to local students, alongside an internship and apprenticeships programme. In 2021–22 29 people took part in paid internships in South Africa, the Philippines and the UK. In the UK we have worked with a variety of partners to reach diverse candidates, including Creative Access, Change 100, the UK government Kickstart programme and Anglia Ruskin University. 

Heidi Mulvey, Head of community engagement, said: “As an organisation, we help people fulfil their potential. We do that through our products and services and also through the actions of our colleagues, who do so in ways which are as diverse and imaginative as they are. The appetite for volunteering and fundraising keeps growing and it’s exciting to consider what this will help us achieve in the years ahead.”

Find out more

To learn more about how we give back to our communities, please take a look at our Community pages.

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