Customers and colleagues volunteer for latest Tidy Friday

Customers and colleagues volunteer for latest Tidy Friday

Customers and our colleagues worked together to clear up an area of Coventry in our Tidy Friday event which aims to clean up areas in our communities.

Teams visited the Barley Lea in Stoke Aldermoor to help clean up the area on 1 August. Everyone involved helped by litter picking, removing bulk waste and planting new plants for customers living there to enjoy.

In total we collected six vans of rubbish and filled two large skips and planted 40 plants in four large containers.

Our Head of Estates and Services Elly Dix said we hold four Tidy Fridays throughout the year, and they are a great way of bringing people together.

She said: “We started doing our Tidy Fridays because we realised some of our estates needed some more attention. We arrive in the morning, spend time working on the environment by litter picking, collecting bulk and gardening. By the time we have finished the area looks much better for our customers to live in.

“Colleagues are often joined by our customers and their children on these events, and it is a great way for us all to work together as a team.

“It’s great to make a real difference for our customers and to leave the estate looking better than when we started. We work with our partners to make a positive difference to our customers and we are grateful to all our partners who donated items for the day.”

Some of the items our partners donated include plants and soil from Creative Gardens, Niyaa Recruitment Agency paid for the food which was provided by Moat House Community Trust, Travis Perkins donated tools, Tudor donated litter picks, and RRT Global donated packs of snacks for children taking part.

Our customer Gwendoline took part on the day with her two sons Leon and Samuel.

Gwendoline said: “It was a good day as we’ve been helping to clean the environment, and it was good community work.

“We enjoyed the day, had fun and the children had fun as they are on holiday at the moment and enjoyed taking part.”

Leon added: “I thought the event was pretty good. I really care about the environment and I’ve been learning about it in my school a lot. I really want to help the environment, and I thought why not help the community as well.”

One of our colleagues who took part in the event was ICT Programme Manager Mills Evans. She said she took part as by volunteering she is making a difference for our customers.

She said: “I helped tidy the garden, removing rubbish, moss and weeds. Being someone who’s predominantly back-of-house I don’t get chance to see what happens with our team and customers on the ground, this was a great opportunity to increase my exposure for a better understanding of what we at Citizen are about.

“This was also a great opportunity to meet more people across the organisation as I’m a relatively new employee, I was also keen to enable a bonding opportunity with my team who are also volunteering today.

“I really enjoyed volunteering, it’s a great initiative to take part in.”

The next event will be taking place later this year so look out for details ahead of the event.

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