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BAE Systems Charity Challenge
BAE Systems Charity Challenge is a world-wide programme which has been running since 1989. We support and encourage all employee driven charitable fundraising and volunteering activities across the world with the aim of contributing positively to the communities around us.
Charity Challenge campaigns are run over a period of eighteen months and during the last world-wide campaign, BAE Systems employees volunteered over 61,300 hours and helped to raise over GBP£6 million/USD$11.7 million/AUD$12.4 million.
Charity Challenge is not just about raising money and volunteering, it is also about raising awareness and can also be used to develop employees and teams in areas such as project management, communication, teamwork and leadership.
As well as working with local charities, our employees in the UK, US and Australia elect partner charities to work with us over the 18 month campaign.
BAE Systems Charity Challenge – Partner Charities
BAE Systems’ Charity Challenge works continually with a large number of charities and community projects around the world. However, to help concentrate our efforts and maximise the full potential of Charity Challenge our employees in the US, Australia and the UK elect partner charities for us to work with over an 18 month campaign.
Our partner charities benefit from a level of matched funding. Our employees from across the globe work closely with our partner charities in order to generate fundraising initiatives, volunteering opportunities and help to raise awareness of the charities.
The BAE Systems partner charities for the 2008 – 2009 campaign are:
UK – Sue Ryder Care (www.suerydercare.org)
US – America Supports You (www.americasupportsyou.mil)
Australia – The Leukaemia Foundation (www.leukaemia.org.au)
Our other home markets, India, Saudi Arabia South Africa and Sweden, are involved in Charity Challenge but their activities are run on an ad hoc basis and they do not currently choose a partner charity.
Graduate Stories:
Team Building Fun
A team from across the UK made up of 1st Year Finance Graduates and Industrial Placement students took part in a number of charity events as a team building exercise during the summer of 2008. The challenge was to raise loads of money whilst also getting the team working together and solving interesting problems.
The team did a number of activities including a cake sale at a local hospice in Warton where a number of people on the team also helped pack bags to help raise more money for the hospice. They also got involved with a fantastic but challenging raft race to raise money for Age Concern in Chester.
Darren Wilson, Assistant Project Accountant from Filton ATC, commented on the raft race saying, ‘Although we faced numerous challenges, (namely the raft completely being broken in transit to the race and having to rebuild it within an hour!), we manage to launch a sea worthy vessel. Everything was going fine until the race started when everyone on the raft decided to paddle as hard as they could with the effect of tearing the raft in two. Ultimately we all got soaking wet and the water was freezing!’
The team did really well though and had a great time and there’s already talk of doing something similar next year as a team building exercise.
Barrow goes the extra mile!
In March 2008 a graduate Charity Challenge team from Barrow-in-Furness Submarine Solutions in the UK came to the aid of a local man, whose wife had recently died of cancer. He needed help decorating the home as he had been so busy concentrating on raising their children whilst holding down a full time job that he has never managed to find the time to finish the decorating project that the couple had started before his wife became ill.
Graduates Rachel Clemance and Marion Hart took up the project and organised for 15 volunteers from the Barrow site to turn up and help out. The project was a huge success with the team clocking up a fantastic 129 hours worth of volunteering for charity!
The team in full was:
Rachel Clemance, Marion Hart, Anne Perry, Aidan Coxon, Jemini Patel, Rob Chaplin, Sara Turman, Daryl Cartmill, Laura Scrivener, Matthew Critchley, Simon Pullin, Alex Jenkinson, Ben Sadler, Lisa Filmalter and Chris Notley
