As some of you who work with us may be aware, we work across many different sectors in commerce, financial services and alternative finance. The latter area has led to arguably our most interesting work to date within the Social Impact Investment industry.
This got us at Redland HQ thinking….
What can we do to benefit society?
We decided that there were two main areas that we are passionate about - hunger and plastic in the oceans.
I had my first day volunteering in a food bank over Christmas 2017. The good people at the Bristol North food bank prepare hundreds of hampers to take to families and individuals across my locality. When packing the hampers you get a first name and the number of children with their ages. It is an emotional experience as you pick out a tin of meat, box of chocolates, box of stuffing, packet of gravy, a tin of vegetables, some biscuits and some crackers. You then try and fill your cardboard box (wrapped in wrapping paper) with other things and select cuddly toys if the children are young enough. One of the boxes was for a 96yr old woman - no doubt someone that had contributed a great deal to society, but now had to rely on charitable donations in order to eat. I’ll try not to get political.
In speaking with the food banks, it is apparent that money donations are actually more helpful than food. It enables them to buy the essentials in bulk and there are lots of things that people don’t tend to donate. They also have times when the donations dry up. They are pretty well stocked from harvest time to Christmas, but by March/April/May they aren’t so much on people’s agenda.
So we will be donating a proportion of our profits to bristolnorthwestfoodbank.org.uk from this day forth as well as volunteering there as much as we can.
It was when I was training for the London Marathon earlier this year that I took a 13-mile run from our office on the Harbourside to Pill and back along the old railway track alongside the River Avon. This is a beautiful stretch and I can recommend it to anyone, but I did start to notice the sheer volume of plastic along the river banks. My mind drifted as it often does on these long runs and I began to think of methods Redland Search could employ to keep plastic out of the waterways. Many ideas came and went over the coming days. Could I sponsor a boat? Could I sponsor a litter pick? None of them really seemed viable. And then I saw this: crowdfunder.co.uk/get-a-sea-bin-for-bristol-harbour-side
Yes, THAT’S IT! We’re on the harbour and we can help fund the new seabins that will help us keep plastic out of the harbour. This means a lot less plastic will escape from Bristol and pollute the seas and oceans.
So there we have it, folks! We are now supporters of Bristol NW food banks and The Harbourside Sea Bins!