Bank of Montreal's Drop-in Session Success
City Action member, Bank of Montreal Financial Group, have 110 employees based in the City. The company wanted to develop a community project that could potentially involve all of their employees. City Action facilitated a relationship between them and Spitalfields Crypt Trust in September 2008. Each week, two to four employee volunteers attend the Shoreditch Community Project at Spitalfields Crypt Trust to prepare and serve lunch to homeless members of the community.
The Shoreditch Community Project
Established in 2001, the project offers adults that are experiencing homelessness a friendly source of help. The service provides advice, practical support and information to homeless people, drug users, alcoholics and people with a history of mental health problems.
BMO’s volunteer support
BMO volunteers provide assistance at the Tuesday drop-in lunch service, which is attended by 30-80 adults for food, support and to meet new people. As well as preparing and serving lunch, the volunteers also buy the food on the way to the centre, providing food of much higher quality than the charity would be able to afford. Depending on demand for lunch, which can some weeks be very high, volunteers will also interact and chat with service users before tidying up at the end of the session. An impressive 18% of all BMO employees have taken part since the project was launched.
The benefits to the community organisation
The effective running of the service, which was previously being delivered with limited resources, enables
the project manager to attend to case work whilst ensuring that their service users are receiving the help and attention that they need.
