Thomas Miller’s IT Team Volunteer Day with St Mungo’s

Employees from Thomas Miller's Group IT function volunteered at one of St Mungo’s London services, spending the day gardening to improve the outdoor space for the clients that live there. 

John Hiskett (Chief Information Officer), Jon Pennington (Head of Application Development), Zulaika Ali (Finance Systems Analyst), Farrel Frier (Finance Systems Manager) and Brendan Geoghegan (Software Developer) took advantage of one of Thomas Miller’s global CSR policies, allowing employees to undertake 3 days paid leave per year to volunteer in local communities, forming a core part of Thomas Miller’s unique Corporate Social Responsibility programme Be The Difference.

St Mungo's, Thomas Miller’s global corporate charity partner, support adults through more than 200 client facing services including emergency, hostel and supportive housing projects, advice services and specialist physical health, mental health, skills and work services. A key driver for this new corporate charity partnership was the opportunities for employees to volunteer their time to help support the charities work and contribute to tackling the issues faced by those experiencing homelessness.

Marking our first volunteer day with St Mungo’s, the Thomas Miller IT team visited one of St Mungo’s male only services that facilitates clients with medium to high support needs. They spent their time gardening, helping to create a safe space for clients to use and socialise in, also for the service to host events (for example BBQ’s) in the summer months.

Many of St Mungo’s accommodation services have gardens, and these outside spaces can be helpful for client’s recovery. Being outside in nature can help to decrease anxiety levels and also help lessen stress and feelings of anger. This service in particular has a large outdoor space, meaning it can be difficult to maintain. With the support from the Thomas Miller volunteers, it allowed St Mungo’s to transform the space in one day, which would normally have taken one staff member a long time.

Thomas Miller looks forward to working with St Mungo’s on many other employee volunteer opportunities throughout the partnership – both in-person and virtually.