Category: Centrus Communities

On the 13^th June 2019, a team from Centrus in London helped in refurbishing a hostel in Forest Hill for the Single Homelessness Project (SHP). SHP are a London-wide charity working to prevent homelessness and help vulnerable and socially excluded people to transform their lives. The hostel in question houses 6 people, aged 16-22, who are offered 24-hour support to bring stability and a sense of ‘home’ and help them with the skills they need to move forward positively with their lives.

The team were split into two groups; one tasked with repainting the living room and the other to start remodeling the garden. The indoor team worked hard to transform the room from one with old decoration and painting to a modern and spacious place. Meanwhile the outdoor team tackled the building and repainting of benches and helped clear the general garden area to make it a more welcoming space.

It was a tiring but incredibly rewarding day, helping to improve and support the lives of both the staff and residents of such an important place.

The Centrus team is very pleased to be joining the growing City Giving Day group of supporting companies in September this year. Centrus Communities is a precious part of our company culture and working with inspiring charities reflects our core ambition to provide modern finance with purpose. If your company would also like to join, please follow this link to register: www.lordmayorsappeal.org/cgd

We had the chance to answer the Lor Mayor’s Appeal questiosn about why we are joining and what it means to us on the CITY AM 10 July 2019 edition.

Why are you supporting CGD?

Centrus Communities is a precious part of our company culture driving a good range of community initiatives. These are inspiring charities that work in the same sectors as our financial experts. The organisational and profile support from City Giving Day gives huge momentum to the internal and external awareness of these contributions.

It also adds further opportunities for action, whether with our time, donations or professional input.

Which charities do you support?

We focus on charities, specific projects or social enterprises within our sectors of work such as the housing sector. We offer probono support to these projects and social enterprises, for example structuring, financial modelling or business planning as well as volunteering employee and partner time across a range of activities.

How will you celebrate CGD?

We are signed up to the Tour de City, always relishing a challenge! It is also part of the fund raising and training for our May 2020 ‘Cycle with Purpose’ event in which we are riding between our London and Dublin offices. We will all be celebrating by supporting the Lord Mayor’s Appeal through dressing ourselves and our office in Red for the day.

Charity in action

We are supporting the Single Homeless Project (SHP) and the Lord Mayor’s Appeal. SHP is a London-wide charity working to prevent homelessness and help vulnerable and socially excluded people to transform their lives.

“Working with inspiring charities reflects our core ambition to provide modern finance with purpose. Being part of the City Giving Day further encourages this inspiration to bring out the best in our people and teams.”

George Roffey, Head of People, Culture and Brand said

On the 12th October 2018, Jason Murphy and Mark Taheny,  members of the Centrus Dublin team participated in the ‘Shine A Light’ fundraising event which took place at The Law Society, Blackhall Place to raise much needed funds for Focus Ireland. This was Jason Murphy’s, MD for Centrus in Ireland, second year taking part in this moving event. Focus Ireland are a non-profit organisation that provide homeless services to the people of Ireland. The aim of ‘Shine a Light’ Night is to bring the business community together for one night to raise awareness and crucial funds and to stand in solidarity and ‘shine a light’ on those experiencing homelessness in Ireland today.

In Ireland, Family homelessness has reached historic numbers with over 3,800 children currently living in emergency accommodation, often unable to get to school and rarely getting a home cooked meal.

Shine A Light took place the evening after Ireland was hit by a severe storm, so rain continued to fall in buckets with our team members settled in for the night equipped only with pieces of cardboard and sleeping bags. Jason and Mark share their thoughts on the experience.

“This is my second year participating  in the Shine a Light event.  My motivations remain the same, which is

a) raise awareness of the family homelessness issue in Ireland,

b) raise funding for this issue and

c) shine a light in particular on the volume of children in Ireland who are homeless.

In my professional capacity I am already fortunate enough to work with some amazing  housing charities who have helped many families find a home.  Through this work I have a good knowledge of the housing sector and the issues being faced by all stakeholders and I have had the opportunity to use my skills to assist these excellent charities to deliver on their objectives of providing more homes for those who are in most in need.  My participation in Shine a Light has always been more focused on raising awareness (as opposed to just fundraising)with other business leaders in our community so that they can use their respective skill sets to come together to make a real impact on a very complex issue.

I mentioned in my story that every child should be able to come home and put down their schoolbag in the security of knowing they can put it down in the same place tomorrow.  For many children (over 3,800 in Ireland today) this is not the case.  I am so grateful to all those who have donated to the campaign (in particular to those who have donated for a second year) to help us exceed our target and also to all those who have engaged with us on the journey.  I hope I am inspiring others to either take part or ask the question “how can we help?”.   This year’s sleepout has continued to give me further motivation to raise awareness of the family homelessness issue in our country and I continue with my pledge to sleep out every year until I see a material resolution of this problem in Ireland” – Jason Murphy

“2018 has been a year of firsts for me – my first year with Centrus, my first time working with Approved Housing Bodies and my first year sleeping out as part of the Shine a Light campaign. I wasn’t sure what to expect on arrival (despite all I had read about previous years), but what I experienced was very different to anything I could have imagined. It was an eye-opening experience, where business leaders come together in a low profile setting to educate themselves on the current issues in homelessness, hear peoples first hand experiences, to discuss some of the highly practical ways in which we can all make a difference and to sleep out for one night to better understand how difficult it really is.

As a first timer, two things really stood out to me:

• My own naivety around the current crisis, the root causes of homelessness and what it is going to take to really make a difference.
• The amazing work that is being done by every volunteer, social worker and fund raiser.

I may not have gotten a wink of sleep that night, partly due to the hard ground, heavy rain and cold air, but, once it was over, I got to go home. I realise now that it is everyone’s responsibility in the country to fix this homelessness crisis and none of us are really ever that far from being homeless ourselves. One or two unfortunate events could leave any of us in dire need of the essential services provided by charities like Focus Ireland. Sincere thanks to all those that supported myself and Jason this year and we hope to have your continued support in futures as we try to play a relatively small part in the solution to this crisis”. – Mark Taheny

Jason and Mark set themselves a target of €10,000 to raise for the event. With the kind donations and match-funding from Centrus Communities, they exceeded this and €10,029.74 was raised for Focus Ireland. Collectively, all participants in the event has raised to date €762,198. All that was asked of these willing individuals was to ‘give one night to change a lifetime’. This one night gave Jason and Mark an opportunity to help.  Hopefully, by sharing their experiences they will have informed others of how much we need to help organisations like Focus Ireland.

We look forward to taking part in ‘Shine A Light’ 2019 and we would encourage other business leaders to do so until this issue for our country is materially resolved! Huge thanks to everyone who donated, every euro makes a difference and your contributions were really appreciated!! Focus Ireland are still taking donations from this event if you wish to help us even further!!!