Community Engagement
As we expand around the globe, we are creating strong relationships with our customers, employees and communities. We recognize our continued success depends on the growth and health of our communities and partners, as well as the vitality and conservation of our natural resources.
We support programmes that focus on improving nutrition and health, education and environmental stewardship. Our corporate contributions are supplemented by our individual businesses and employee-led fundraising and volunteer efforts through more than 250 Cargill Cares Councils around the world.
In the UK, we have five Cares Councils who support a number of initiatives and projects across the UK, some of these include:
Health and Nutrition
- Provided funds to local school in Leatherhead in Surrey, to build an outdoor eating area enabling every student to have access to a healthy nutritious meal.
- Supporting Lincolnshire Businesses for Breakfast programme which enables 16 local schools to provide healthy breakfasts and advice on health and nutrition.
- Employee volunteers helped to establish vegetable gardens at a local homeless shelter in Manchester. These vegetables allow the shelter to provide home-grown healthy meals to those who use their service.
Education
- Working with the Salford Education Business Partnership to run food science workshops for local school students.
- A group of volunteers provide one-to-one reading sessions with local schools in Manchester.
Environment
- Partnering with the Surrey Cares Trust in order to protect and enhance Surrey waterways.
- Funding and creating a wildlife garden for a local school in Witham St Hughs.
- In Hereford we partnered with Concern Universal to highlight the importance of water conservation.
Spotlight on two examples of Cargill’s local partnerships in the UK
FareShare
FareShare, a national food charity in the UK, aims to relieve food poverty and find a solution to environmental problems of surplus but still edible food, promoting the message that ‘no good food should be wasted’.
As part of Cargill’s commitment to providing safe, nutritious and accessible food supplies, Cargill’s grain and oilseed and refined oil businesses have been supporting FareShare since 2009 and provided a two-year financial commitment to the charity in order to open a new depot in Liverpool, UK.
This depot, which was officially opened in September 2010, is the 13th FareShare depot in the UK and will support in excess of 100 community groups in Liverpool distributing ‘fit for purpose’ food to those most in need.
The proximity of the depot to Cargill’s Liverpool operations will also enable employees to get involved either through volunteering or sharing their expertise in areas such as logistics, planning, health and safety and food safety to the organisation.
In addition to the investment in Liverpool, Cargill also raised funds in Manchester to support Emerge, the North West franchise partner of FareShare, which relies on local funding to support its vital services.
Children’s Adventure Farm Trust (CAFT)
Cargill has partnered with CAFT, a local charity that provides holidays for disabled, disadvantaged and terminally ill children and their carers from across the North West Region, since 2006. In addition to funding raised by Cargill and its employees since the partnership began, Cargill volunteers have helped CAFT improve the farm environment for the children and their families.
Every year Cargill hosts a family fun day at CAFT, inviting employees and their families to spend the day participating in a variety of events and challenges designed to raise much needed funds for CAFT’s vital work.