Anna Heane (Senior Marketing Executive, TT Club) recently took part in Thomas Miller’s volunteering days scheme, that allows employees up to three days paid leave per year to undertake civic duties and community projects. This forms a core part of Thomas Miller’s unique Corporate Social Responsibility programme "Be The Difference".

Anna tells us about her three volunteering days working with The Felix Project, helping to distribute unwanted food to food banks and community centres:

The Felix Project collects fresh, nutritious food that cannot be sold. They then deliver this to charities and schools so they can provide healthy meals and help the most vulnerable in our society.

The work is varied and involves picking food and stacking pallets for each beneficiary, sorting the goods in and inputting it into the system. It was a full on day on your feet, carting boxes and crates all day long, but it’s a welcome change from sitting at my desk all day.

Working in transport and logistics insurance, it’s really interesting to see the other side of operations (yes, really!). I’m also now a dab hand at manoeuvring a pallet truck, which is a skill I never thought I’d have. The other staff and volunteers are all super helpful and lovely, everyone’s really happy to be helping out. You meet people you would never have crossed paths with otherwise.

To anyone thinking about volunteering, it really is a no brainer. If the whole of Thomas Miller used their three volunteer days, that would be nearly 18,000 hours of labour going to causes you care about a year. I think what takes effort is finding a cause that matters to you that welcomes ad hoc volunteers, but once you’ve found it, slotting in three days into your yearly calendar is easy and a really refreshing change from the day job.