Our community programme works to provide access to opportunity using our people, business and partnerships to drive positive change in the communities we live and work in. This year we used over 2.5% of our profit to support charities and community groups across the world. Since 2023 our London office has supported The Felix Project, a charity which collects fresh, nutritious food that cannot be sold and delivers this surplus food to charities and schools so they can provide healthy meals and help the most vulnerable in our society. Bertie Tonks, Chief People Officer at Collinson, and members of TCG leadership spent a day volunteering with The Felix Project. Here, Bertie tells us how they all got on.
"I got to use my volunteering day at The Felix Project, a charity the London office has been supporting for the last year. Donning our aprons and some very stylish hairnets (I managed to avoid this by coming prepared and wearing a hat!) David Evans, Ikwu Amiaka, Cadence Willis, Marcus Roach, Aman Chohan, Simon Feeney, Sarah Thake and I were put to work in the industrial kitchens. We spent our time packing food that had been cooked onsite by The Felix Project chefs, ready to be distributed to charities and individuals across London." said Bertie Tonks. "Over the day, the team managed to get 4,211 meals boxed up, ready to go out – including chicken curry, dim sum and roast pork with vegetables. Every hour I spent volunteering was worth around 200 meals for Londoners. What I found incredible was seeing perfectly good food that would have gone to waste, be made into wholesome meals for people who would otherwise be going without."
"It was a fantastic and extremely humbling experience, that has made its mark on me personally. It’s great to see Collinson standing so firmly behind such causes. I’ll definitely be back to volunteer again and will be organising a day for my team in the not-so-distant future!"
Sarah Thake, Social Impact Lead at Collinson, added, “With the ongoing cost of living crisis, increasing numbers of people are falling into food poverty. It was so rewarding to be able to spend our day helping to combat that. It was great to be able to spend time together as a team as well as support this incredible cause - even if it was absolutely knackering.”
Why support The Felix Project?
Every day thousands of Londoners go to bed hungry – with a recent report showing 15% of UK households – equivalent to approximately eight million adults and three million children – experienced food insecurity in January, as high food prices continued to hit the pockets of low-income families.
The Felix Project is here to address that. They rescue good, surplus food from the food industry that cannot be sold and would otherwise go to waste. They then sort, sometimes cook and deliver this food to almost one thousand front-line charities, primary schools and holiday programmes in London. That way, food that would have gone to waste is reaching vulnerable people, homeless people, people with poor mental health or those who simply cannot afford to regularly buy healthy food.
