Five employees from local infrastructure services provider Amey have spent an enthusiastic day making the most of their Community Involvement Day for Restore, an Oxfordshire-based mental health charity.
The volunteering team from Amey helped clean and decorate a café and shop at Littlemore Mental health Centre ready for its opening. Restore are working with staff and volunteers supporting patients to set up the café and shop and run it as a social enterprise serving the local community.
Restore Project Coordinator Rosa Parsons said: “The team from Amey transformed the kitchen in a couple of hours and our list of 'jobs to do' got ticked off quickly. We had help on another day from an Amey employee who was brilliant and got the shelves up in the shop.
“The shop is now stocked, which is great as this is the first part of the project to open. All the volunteers worked so hard and it gave us a real boost to have their support. Thank you!”
The Restore project at Littlemore, which is where the organisation first started in 1977, will support 50 people a year with their recovery, development and transition back into the community and into work and volunteering.
Each Amey employee is given one ‘Community Involvement’ day per year to volunteer their time to a worthy cause, with many choosing to get involved in local community projects that benefit their local area. Around 90,000 hours of community hours will be available to support social projects in 2013.