O2 UK in the community
It's Your Community
We launched a new community fund with the Conservation Foundation - It’s Your Community - this year. The scheme offers awards of up to £1,000 to enable groups and individuals across the UK to make improvements to where they live. The Conservation Foundation administers applications and takes the project into the community through local presentations at our retail stores.
Since launching the programme, we have had 800 applicants and made over 70 awards. We will encourage our employees to get actively involved in 2007 when our five main sites elect their own projects and charity partners under the ‘It’s Your Community’ banner. We will also add a volunteering element to the scheme.
Weston Spirit
Our three-year partnership with Weston Spirit has been very successful. In 2006 we exceeded our target to raise £250,000 for young people with limited opportunity through the O2 Life Line Challenge, reaching just under £300,000 by March 2007.
Weston Spirit is co-founded by Simon Weston OBE, whose experiences as a young man and in the Falklands War inspired him to work with young people in need.
Central to this project is a joint mentoring scheme – JAM (Just Ask Me), a peer support project that brings together Weston Spirit, O2 UK employees and mobile phone services to help young people’s personal development through schools.
During the year volunteers worked in schools in Glasgow, Bury, Merseyside, Leeds and Slough. Over three years, over 300 mentors have coached and supported sixth-formers, who in turn have supported around 1,000 younger pupils.
JAM volunteers will continue to support Weston Spirit in the coming year.
Life Line Challenge
In 2006 we ran the O2 Life Line Challenge, a programme of fundraising to support Weston Spirit.
The O2 Life Line Challenge aimed to:
• Give our employees opportunities to contribute to the charity in fun ways.
• Tap into our employees’ Balance programme of health and wellbeing.
• Raise £250,000 for Weston Spirit.
We achieved our goals in ways that also focused on fitness and fun. They included:
• A sponsored ‘Race to Madrid’ using exercise bikes in our UK offices.
• The Life Line Challenge Cup – a five-a-side sponsored football tournament culminating in a final at Highbury, Arsenal’s football stadium.
• A series of ‘O2 Chill’ parties at different O2 sites and a company-wide charity auction,to which over 1,000 people put in bids for various O2-donated lots.
Child protection
In 2006 we began to work closely with Childnet International, the charity for child internet safety, by launching a programme of education for parents on avoiding risks to children from mobile phones.
We have identified over 100 Child Protection Champions, employee volunteers who have offered to take the child safety message to our customers. We ran ‘Protect our Children’ sessions to give them the skills needed to offer good advice.
In December, O2 UK launched an external ‘Protect Our Children’ website in partnership with Childnet. We also provided handy cards in stores, which list major child protection services to which parents can refer.
O2 UK supports Teach UR Mum to TXT, a national campaign to help parents keep in touch with their children via text messages. Formerly run by Milly’s Fund, it is now managed by the Suzy Lamplugh Trust.
In 2006, we supported a charity organisation called pfeg (personal finance education group), by piloting a project in schools called ‘finance education and mobile’. The aim of the project has been to support primary schools to develop and deliver a module of financial education for 9-11 year olds on the costs and responsible use of mobile phones.
Crime prevention
O2 UK continues to partner with Her Majesty’s Prison Service in the schools-based programme Prison Me – No Way! Officers and O2 UK employees talked to hundreds of students in over 40 schools during the year, demonstrating to young people why they should steer clear of crime. We provide tips on mobile phone safety, theft avoidance and how to handle text harassment or bullying.
O2 UK total community investment
1 February – December 2006.
1 February – December 2006.
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