A Day for Medway at Rainham Oast House
Thirteen members of staff volunteered for a
days hard graft clearing undergrowth and litter to help Rainham
Oast House Community Centre as part of the mhs homes "Day
for Medway" scheme.
Staff from Grounds Maintenance were joined by the Human
Resources and Legal teams in a project to clear the overgrown
shrubbery surrounding the community centre. Fully qualified members
of the Grounds Maintenance team used trimmers and hedge cutters to
clear the way as the HR and Legal team loaded all the branches and
leaves onto the vans and litter picked the area.
Steve Skinner, mhs homes Plant Fitter said, "Although it has
been really hard work and tiring I’ve really enjoyed it. It’s been
great working with people from different departments. The Day for
Medway is a really good idea in helping community centres like the
Oast House get extra help to get projects finished."
Chair of Trustees at the Rainham Oast House Community Centre,
Graham Anstee was also there on the day to help out and provide the
workers with tea and biscuits. He said, "Today has been absolutely
fantastic. We are so grateful to everyone that has helped us clear
this area. We only have a few volunteers and it’s difficult to get
everyone together at the same time to do something on this scale,
so I’m overwhelmed with the help the mhs homes staff have given us.
Now we’ve cleared some space our disabled adults group hope to do
some gardening work to transform the place even further. This
really has been the kick start we needed, thank you."
The community driven initiative "A Day for Medway" has been
introduced to enable staff of mhs homes to join forces with local
community groups and projects for one whole day to give staff a
wider knowledge and experience of local projects and to give
charities and organisers who really need it a day of help, totally
free of charge. The projects can range from building repairs to
helping out with reading classes at schools; doing odd jobs for the
elderly, helping with administration work or fundraising for local
charities.
(February 2011)