…getting someone else to write your christmas cards?
We all know that Christmas card writing is a chore, so this year you could dispense with the process altogether as well as donating to a really worthy cause, with the CRASH No Christmas Card Appeal. By donating your Christmas card budget to the charity for homeless people, it will put your company logo on its group mail out, and job done!
The charity takes a practical approach to dealing with homelessness, bringing real industry expertise to projects designed to deal with the problem. One of its latest projects, Step by Step, a £3.7m, 32-bed residential and training unit in Aldershot for homeless youth opened last month after a 16-month build, aided by free materials and a £20,000 grant from CRASH.
Roofing firm Bauder designed and built the centre’s new roof for free, providing a literal “roof over the head” for hundreds of young people.
…getting your kit off for the kids?
In a scene that could be taken from the latest episode of ITV’s The Only Way is Essex, a Woodford construction firm has posed in the nude for Children in Need for their 2012 calendar. Yes, the Mulalley Lads have got it out for the ladies, and have been snapped au naturel carrying out an array of construction activities, including ladder climbing, fork lift truck driving and pneumatic drilling.
It’s all in the best possible taste, of course — some of the firm’s “models” are using none other than Children in Need mascot Pudsey to keep themselves decent. Once you’ve mentally processed this irony, you can console yourself with the fact that all the proceeds will help UK children’s charities.
Mulalley associate director John Gristey said: “I hope people will put their hand in their pocket and support this fantastic cause,” he says. If only for a pocket to put your hand into…
… of looking down rather than up?
Oscar Wilde once famously said that some of us are looking at the stars, but let’s face it, most of us are in the gutter — and probably none more so than Haydon Robinson of Gutter Mate. He’s just won Best Recycling Product at the Herts Green Awards, held at Knebworth Barns. His product filters all of the rain flowing down a downpipe, protecting drains and soakaways from the build up of debris.
The filter is positioned about five feet above the ground, so it can be cleaned out without needing a ladder.
The life of geniuses can be lonely, as Wilde would attest to, but with Gutter Mate, at least Robinson’s got a friend…
…suiting up for England and St John?
If you were going to choke on a chicken bone, there’s probably nowhere better to do it than at the St John Ambulance First Aid Awards, being held this month in London. With 42 deaths on UK construction sites last year — a number that really needs to be zero — the awards are designed to draw attention to and celebrate organisations that have exemplary first-aid standards.
Five construction companies have been nominated this year, and the black-tie event will be hosted by BBC news reader Sophie Raworth. Awards will be presented by, among others, presenter Matthew Wright “who would have choked to death without first aid”, and wilderness expert Ray Mears, who gave first aid to a fellow crew member when he was bizarrely “involved in a helicopter accident during filming”.
Now I’m not superstitious, but you know what they say about things happening in threes…
