As CPL One managing director Mike Sewell explains, we’ll be making extra donations to three charities this year.
First it was the Christmas cards. Now it’s the Christmas chocolates.
Not so long ago, our team members spent hours during the build-up to Christmas signing hundreds of cards for our clients, suppliers and other stakeholders.
We stopped posting physical Christmas cards a few years ago, but have continued to send chocolates and other gifts in recent years.
They were both a lovely thing to do; a chance to say thank you to the many people with whom we work and to acknowledge that it takes a true team effort to create and deliver some consistently great work during the year.
But, in recent years, we have increasingly questioned whether sending physical gifts to our clients and stakeholders was always the right thing to do. So, for Christmas 2024, we have decided to give more money to the three charities we support as a company.
We’re sure you will understand why we’re doing this.
These charities do some fantastic work – and I trust you’ll allow me a quick plug for each of them here.
The charity supports people with this horrible form of asbestos cancer. It’s a charity that is particularly close to the hearts of the team at CPL One as Martin (pictured below left), the husband of our colleague Janette Millan (below right), is currently living with mesothelioma.
Soon after we heard about Martin’s diagnosis, it was brilliant to see Janette’s fellow media sales expert Caroline Harland (below centre) rise to the occasion and go full-on in raising funds for Martin, Janette and the charity. Caroline ran a brilliant coffee morning at our office in August, followed soon after by a crowdfunding campaign that would enable Martin and Janette to set off on a holiday of a lifetime to make some precious memories.
Between them, these raised more than £7,650 and CPL One is pleased to be making a further contribution to Mesothelioma UK this Christmas.
With its universities, science parks and fast-growing biomedical campus, Cambridge is an affluent city. But it also has sections of extreme poverty including in and around the Barnwell area, where our Cambridge office is located. Abbey People runs targeted local community projects, including running a food hub, supporting access to education and employment, and developing a culture of volunteering in the community. We support employees to volunteer at the food hub, and hope that more will do so in 2025 when we’ll also be carrying out some pro bono work for Abbey People, including creating newsletters and an annual report.
For this Christmas, our Wellbeing team have liaised with Abbey People to arrange for our employees (a few of whom are pictured below) to put together two special hampers for families who are struggling with extra financial pressures at this time of year. It has been brilliant to see our team’s response – and the company will be making a financial contribution to further support Abbey People’s work.
This one, I have to admit, is particularly close to my heart. My wife and I volunteered for the Batemans Trust in Chennai, India, back in 2006-7, supporting the fantastic work this small charity does to deliver education, secure accommodation and welfare for disadvantaged children.
Over the years since then, the charity has changed the life chances of dozens of young people and it has ambitious plans to build its own school in the future.
CPL One sponsors seven-year-old Roshini (pictured below), who had a particularly challenging childhood before joining the girls’ hostel run by Batemans’ sister charity the Satkaarya Trust. We also carry out pro bono work for the charity, writing and designing an annual printed newsletter, as well as regular enewsletters and other material. And we’ll be topping up our donations to the charity this Christmas.
Of course, we all have individual charities that we support, but if you feel able to make a donation to one or more of these charities this year it would be hugely appreciated. And it might even make up for not receiving a box of chocolates from CPL One this year!
Donate to Mesothelioma UK here.
Donate to Abbey People here.
Donate to Batemans Trust here.
