Snapshot of 2009 - our key achievements..

A snapshot of 2009

In spite of economic gloom and well-documented challenges for the charitable sector, last year still held much to celebrate and some key achievements.  Here are the highlights from 2009:

Through the Zurich Cares Programme (funded jointly by employees and Zurich):

• 25.3% of Zurich staff across the UK now support Zurich Cares, Zurich Community Trust’s employee charity fund, through Give As You Earn.  This is the highest take up rate we have ever achieved across the UK.  
• Zurich staff raised an impressive £530,000 for Zurich Cares, comfortably exceeding our target of £503,000 – a real achievement in this economic climate.
• We awarded £250,000 to our six long-term national partners:  Marie Curie Cancer Care, NSPCC ChildLine, Foundation for Conductive Education, Hope and Homes for Children, Calvert Trust and Canine Partners.  
• We awarded a further £750,000 to charities in the UK and overseas through our Zurich Cares grant programme.
• Zurich staff undertook 187 team challenges to make a difference to charitable organisations across the UK.  Zurich staff also successfully volunteered their business skills to charities with 108 separate skillshare projects brokered.

Through our longer term Social Transformation Programmes funded by Zurich:

• Over 100 vulnerable older people were supported by Zurich staff volunteers through A Call in Time, our telephone befriending service run in partnership with Help the Aged and Age Concern. The programme's volunteering model has now been successfully adopted by Prudential. An impact study also showed that the service gives isolated older people a reason to live and makes them feel valued members of society.
• We re-focused our Mental Health programme to concentrate specifically on young people’s mental health and early intervention.  Running alongside our existing relationship with The Place2Be, we entered into two new partnerships for the next three years with The Prince’s Trust to educate student social workers as part of their Team Programme and The Mental Health Foundation, where our partnership has seen the creation of an exciting new coalition for children and young people's mental well being.  
• Through our partnership with Addaction where we are funding the 'Breaking the Cycle' programme - family workers in Cumbria, Derby and Tower Hamlets worked with 465 family members where there is parental drug misuse.  Of these families, 81% of parents significantly reduced their use of drugs or alcohol and 86% significantly improved their skills as parents.  
• The India Programme continues to combine core funding and the sharing of skills to support our seven NGO partners in Southern India.  

Through the Openwork Foundation (funded by members of Openwork):

• £500,000 was donated to our two partners, Children's Hospices UK and The Phllippine Community Fund as well as many charities supporting disadvantaged children in the UK and overseas.