East Midlands housing association hosts community project week

The five projects were spread across Derbyshire and Northamptonshire in a jam-packed week dedicated to giving back to local communities. Customers and their neighbours popped along for a chat, free hot drinks and sweet treats in ‘cuppa and cake’ mornings at Moulton, Kilsby, Daventry, Heage and Heanor, as well as seeing the transformation of gardens at the local community centres in the latter two locations.

'Futures in the Community' first started as a single day in December 2022, where all employees left their desks behind to help give back to the neighbourhoods where its customers live. This time around volunteers from teams all over the business, including customer services, ICT, assets and finance swapped their usual jobs of crunching numbers and taking phone calls, to cleaning furniture and tending to plants.

Travis Perkins in Ripley donated various items to help with the different projects, including a new storage unit for the garden of Park Crescent community centre in Heage.

Kate Curley, National Social Housing Account Manager at Travis Perkins said: “Working together with our customers to improve the local communities and provide sustainable improvements to the area is an invaluable part of my job. It's a pleasure to be part of these important community projects that bring so much more than just a physical change to the area.

“I hope the residents enjoy the improved green space that me, Travis Perkins Ripley and Futures have worked together to create.”

Sophie Harding, Community Engagement Project Delivery Officer at Futures said: "It really was a brilliant week. It took a lot of planning and support from multiple teams to figure out what we could do to make a difference to our customers and communities, but the feedback we've had so far has been great.

"Colleagues were building planters, jet-washing, cleaning, digging and planting to create gardens for the community to look after, and just as importantly, chatting to customers in person. I’d like to thank all colleagues, customers, Travis Perkins and other partners for giving up their time to make the week such a success.”