East London Business Alliance hosted their annual Employee Volunteering Awards at Wilton’s, the world’s oldest music hall in December 2009.

Chairman Richard Reid of KPMG told the audience that in the last 12 months, over 8,000 volunteers from City and Canary Wharf companies had volunteered their time, skills and expertise to schools and voluntary organisations across East London. ELBA has also lobbied on the future of the Olympics broadcast centre and helped nearly 400 local people into work.

Spitalfields Team Win
Hammerson won the Volunteer Team award for their team challenges with The Map Squad in Spitalfields.

ELBA encourages team volunteering opportunities that go beyond traditional team challenges, by focusing on skills sharing and working alongside community partners. As the winning team in this category, Hammerson fitted the bill perfectly for their work with The Map Squad.

Hammerson provided invaluable logistical, marketing and planning support enabling The Map Squad to host its community fair at Spitalfields Traders Market. Showcasing its grassroots community development projects at the market raised awareness of the Map Squad’s work supporting people with learning difficulties and attracted potential investors for future community projects.

“Hammerson supported The Map Squad every step of the way and by working together enabled great skills transfer between the two organisations.” said a spokesman for the ELBA.

More EVA Winners
The other winners of the coveted 2009 Employee Volunteering Awards were:

• Joint winners for the Individual Volunteer award were Taran Wilkhu from Nomura and Laura-Louise White from UBS.
• The Rokeby Business Support group including Accenture, BT, Tate & Lyle, FSA, McGrigors, East Thames Group, London City Airport, London Thames Gateway Development Corporation and Newham Education Business Partnership won the Partnerships award for their work supporting Rokeby Secondary School.
• London City Airport won the Employment Champion award
• Emma Baudey of Bank of America was the Legacy Champion.
• Outstanding Achievement was awarded to Laura-Louise White from UBS.
• A special Lifetime Supporter award was presented to Graham Mallet from Thames Water.

The prizes were presented by Richard Reid, London Chairman of KPMG and ELBA Chair.

Liam Kane, ELBA’s Chief Executive said “We are delighted that volunteering numbers and those volunteers’ commitment to supporting the East London community has been maintained throughout 2009 despite current economic conditions. All 107 of our member companies deserve an award, but these were the best of the best and their efforts were truly outstanding and were worthy winners.”

About East London Business Alliance:
The East London Business Alliance is a membership organisation that creates possibilities in East London by connecting businesses to local people and community partners enabling social, economic and infrastructure change.

Working in Tower Hamlets, Hackney, Newham and the other Olympic Host Boroughs, ELBA has over 20 years of experience in bringing business skills to help build the capacity of local organisations and regeneration programmes. Involvement in East London is delivered primarily through employee volunteering, helping people into work and ensuring a positive legacy beyond the 2012 Olympics through ELBA’s flagship Legacy 2020 programme.

ELBA works with key stakeholders in each borough to identify the needs and issues requiring support and creates unique opportunities for change by linking its 100 plus corporate members to local people and public and community partners.

For more information please visit www.elba-1.org.uk