Volunteers Week at UK Finance?

This week marks Volunteers Week an opportunity to celebrate the contributions volunteers make to communities across the UK. As part of the week, we're shining a light on colleagues who give up their time to volunteer.

Over the last few years UK Finance have worked with the social enterprise ‘I Have A Voice ,’ to increase participation in public affairs and communications in under-represented groups of society. Across the charity’s career focused programmes, 70 per cent are from low-income households, two out of three are female, almost half identify as ethnic minority and 20 per cent as LGBTQ+. ?

Our Campaigns Manager, Sophie Iman , volunteered as a mentor with the social enterprise. Being a mentor is extremely rewarding as you learn lots of new skills from gaining new perspectives on work and life, developing active listening skills as we as personal confidence. Mentoring should work both ways and I know my mentee benefited a lot from our work together. It was brilliant to see the growth and his confidence increase over the course of the mentorship.”??

At UK Finance we recently hosted a session for 18 students taking part in the I have a voice CIC 's workshop programme, sharing with them insight into the different roles at UK Finance as well as giving them an office tour, for many it was the first time they had been in a business environment. Find out more about our work with ‘I Have A Voice’ on LinkedIn . ?

UK Finance Social committee??

As an organisation we have a Social Committee, an initiative set up by colleagues who want to socialise and support charity fundraising. Formed in 2017, it is currently made up of 12 members, all of which are colleagues who volunteer their time to be involved. The committee gives colleagues a forum where they can get together and share ideas on fundraising and volunteering. It’s also our primary point of contact for our charity partners - every year we ask our colleagues to vote on who our charity partner should be.

This year our nominated charity is Alzheimer’s Research UK , the UK’s leading dementia and Alzheimer’s disease research charity. Colleagues have been raising money through internal events, like our International Food Day, a book swap as well as taking on challenges like the London Marathon.

At UK Finance we provide colleagues with three volunteering days per year. This scheme allows colleagues to take up to three days paid time off per year to volunteer. Volunteering demonstrates our commitment to our communities, our people and our members, and is integral to our role as a responsible business and our purpose of building a better society.????