Starbucks volunteering day
We’ve recently been working with Starbucks in the West Midland and Bristol through courses aimed at getting refugees into work alongside Starbucks’ pledge to employ 2,500 refugees across Europe by 2022. You can read about the successes of the Birmingham course here.
Our relationship has been building with the global coffee chain ever since, and we were approached by West Midlands stores as they wanted to give something back to ACH. On the 24th April, a group of nine store managers from Starbucks stores across the West Midlands came to volunteer at one of our Birmingham properties.
There was a need for some gardening to be done and they agreed to help with this. Unfortunately, the weather was horrendous! However, this didn’t stop any of the volunteers from getting stuck in and moving logs and bricks to help clear up the garden.
On a much-needed break from the weather, there were several speeches (and lots of cake). Our CEO, Fuad Mahamed, kicked this off by thanking the Starbucks volunteers for spending their time to help our tenants. He described how their pledge to employ refugees is very close to our hearts at ACH and he celebrates the work that they are doing. We then heard from Lina, one of the successful candidates from the Starbucks course who is now working for them, who talked about how much the experience has impacted her life. Read her story here.
Julia, who has been a huge part of organising the courses and heads up our careers advice team, also wanted to give a huge thanks to the volunteers. It was then suggested that the volunteers help to plant three climbing rose plants called ‘Star Performers' in the garden to celebrate both the achievements of the three successful refugees in Birmingham and also to recognise the growth of the flourishing collaboration between ACH and Starbucks.
It was a hugely positive day and it was great to see how well the Starbucks store managers worked as a team and kept their spirits high. It was, most importantly, valuable for our tenants who are the ones who will truly receive the benefits from the volunteering. We’d like to give a special thanks to Helen from our Birmingham training team for organising the day and really pulling out all the stops to making it happen.
We hope to organise similar events in the future with businesses interested in volunteering with us in Bristol or the West Midlands. To find out more about our work with businesses visit https://www.ach.org.uk/businesses
