Employee volunteering

Encouraging your employees to get involved with The Connection at St Martin’s volunteering programme is an excellent way of improving staff morale, developing staff competencies and demonstrating your commitment to the community.

We can offer you a bespoke employee volunteering package that meets your CSR objectives and your employees’ community involvement requirements.

Day Centre Volunteering

If you are one of the many companies that now allocate an annual allowance of time for employees to undertake voluntary work, you might like to encourage your employees to volunteer in our Day Centre for homeless people, based in Trafalgar Square.

Kitchen Volunteering
We are currently looking for companies to ‘own’ a two hour shift in our kitchen during the week, providing us with two employee volunteers for each shift. Working alongside our fully trained staff and other volunteers, this is a really practical way for your staff to get involved with the ‘hands-on’ work of our charity. From meal preparation to serving on the counter or washing up, your staff really will be making a difference to our clients’ health and well-being.

To get started call our Corporate Partnerships Manager, Wendy Lynch on 020 7269 0273 or e-mail wendy.lynch@cstm.org.uk.  

Own-time Volunteering
You might also like to encourage your employees to volunteer as an individual in our day centre during the evenings or on the weekend. Full induction and training is always given.
For own-time volunteering enquiries please contact our Volunteer Co-ordinator, Lance Kuhn on 020 7925 7893 or e-mail lance.kuhn@cstm.org.uk.  

Staff Teambuilding Days

We actively encourage local companies to take part in social engagement activities with our homeless clients. This could involve a group of your staff accompanying a group of our clients to museums, theatres, bowling or picnics. If your company has a football team you might like to play against our client football team on a weekday afternoon.

As well as being fun for clients, these activities can reduce their feelings of social exclusion and increase confidence. By participating in these activities your employees can also enjoy a fun, team-building day out, as well as challenge their own perceptions about homeless people.

“I think that one of the most rewarding projects that we have worked on with The Connection at St Martin’s so far was the trip to Bewl Water. When the clients first arrived you could see the trepidation on their faces, but as the day went on and they got to know each other and the ICG volunteers you could see their confidence grow, which was fantastic.” Darren Horton, Community Affairs, Intermediate Capital Group.

To get started call our Corporate Partnerships Manager, Wendy Lynch on 020 7269 0273 or e-mail wendy.lynch@cstm.org.uk.  

CV/interview workshops

We actively encourage companies to get involved in the design and delivery of Workspace - our employment and training service. Employer input is vital if we are to give homeless jobseekers employability skills that are relevant and current to the job market.

It is also a great way for your company’s staff to share their skills and become positive role models for homeless people seeking work. You can help us by:

• Offering work placements and/or job tasters – these allow clients to gain valuable experience in the working world. If your company can offer work placements in the following sectors, this would be particularly helpful to us: Administration, retail, leisure, building, catering, security.
• Running CV workshops – advising clients on how best to structure and present a CV.
• Hosting mock Interviews – to help our clients prepare for interviews and develop interview and communication techniques.
• Delivering financial literacy – teaching clients to be financially aware through debt and money management.

To get started call our Corporate Partnerships Manager, Wendy Lynch on 020 7269 0273 or e-mail wendy.lynch@cstm.org.uk.