Over the past 60 years, we have been involved in everything from education and sports projects to environmental schemes and family play areas.
Supporting reading
Walkers has supported a number of reading initiatives. We supported Right to Read, a national campaign launched in 2003, which encourages volunteers from business to become reading partners with 7-11 year olds.
We also run a number of schemes from our plants countrywide. For example, we have set up Reading Buddy schemes where employees go into local primary schools to read with the pupils. Currently over 100 volunteers are going into their local schools. We also ran the Books for Schools scheme with The Sun and the News of the World until 2003. Walkers customers collected vouchers towards new books for their local school, resulting in over 6.6 million books being given to thousands of schools up and down the country.
Investing in education
In addition to our efforts to encourage reading, we also invest in a number of education schemes in the regions where we operate.
The Walkers Learning Centre at our Peterlee plant caters for personal and business learning. The Centre provides staff with the government-backed Skills for Life package, which helps adults with literacy, language and numeracy skills.
The Centre is an accredited adult numeracy and literary test centre, so it benefits the whole community. We are very proud of the role the centre fulfils and were delighted when it received a gold award in the Food and Drink Federation's Workplace Community Awards.
In Leicester, the home of Walkers, we contributed towards the £20m City Academy, aimed at providing quality education for children from deprived parts of the city.
Employees at our Skelmersdale facility have formed partnerships with local schools to help with IT and science, and we are introducing site visits for families of employees to see them at work.
Walkers employees are also encouraged to volunteer to become school governors, and our volunteers have helped by painting classrooms or taking part in fundraising.
Supporting community charities
Our employees get involved in their local communities in a wide variety of ways.
In Leicester, Walkers electricians gave their time and expertise in 2007 to help save the New Parks Club for Young People from closure.Our plants also raise money for local charities. In Leicester, the Factory Shop recently raised £7,000 for Leicestershire Air Ambulance, which provides an invaluable service to the region.
As well as our staff raising funds for many local charities, Walkers has also been an official partner of Comic Relief since 2003. Since then, we have raised over £2.5m for the charity.
Encouraging active lives
Walkers has a strong commitment to help Britons get into shape.
We ran a promotion to encourage healthier lifestyles in 2004 by giving away over 2 million walk-o-meters as part of the Get Britain Walking campaign. These walk-o- meters helped to motivate people to walk more by enabling them to reach the Government's recommended target of 30 minutes of physical activity every day.
Since 1978, we have also been involved with grass-roots football, sponsoring the England schoolboy international team and backing after-school training schemes.
As well as our national work, we also support community initiatives.
In 2007, we funded two Parks for Life, one in Leicester and one in Reading. These parks are state-of-the-art family playgrounds with sports areas, a climbing zone and an i.play, an electronic play device intended to improve fitness, co-ordination and agility.
Walkers also sponsors Leicester City Football Club's youth academy. As a result of our sponsorship of the club, Leicester City FC's stadium is called The Walkers Stadium.
Supporting health and wellness
As well as sporting initiatives, Walkers has also invested over the years in a number of health initiatives.
Our Peterlee plant, for example, hosted Men@Work, an initiative to offer health advice to men in a region where the life expectancy is below the national average.
Support was offered on issues such as healthy eating, weight management and physical activity, as well as advice on alcohol awareness and giving up smoking.
Walkers employees, as well as employees of other local businesses, received blood pressure and pulse checks, as well as tests for cholesterol and blood sugar levels.
We have also partnered with regional agencies for initiatives such as hosting support groups for sufferers of dystonia, a neurological movement disorder, and for sufferers of domestic violence.
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