Community Engagement

This arm of our corporate citizenship is focused on helping to address social challenges via employee volunteerism, corporate sponsorships and donations that support culture, art & community development.

Our Employee Volunteerism Programme

In 2001, Guardian General Insurance Limited (GGIL) formalised its employee volunteerism programme – a staff initiated effort under the umbrella of Community Caravan. Funding for all Community Caravan's initiatives comes from monthly staff contributions, which are matched dollar for dollar by the organisation.

 

Community Caravan initially focused on the children in our communities, but later expanded to address a wider societal need and the needs of the families.

Under the Community Caravan we have donated books to the KIND foundation, we were able to assist with the equipment necessary to implement a hair dressing course at the St. Jude's Home For Girls and more recently, we were able to collect relief items for distribution to flood victims in San Fernando and Gasparillo.

  

Guardian General Pays It Forward

Whilst our earlier initiatives were structured as one-off projects, the big shift came in 2007 where the entire organisation was engaged in a Pay It Forward challenge.  

The Pay-It-Forward challenge was structured to allow staff to work together in teams to serve the less fortunate and to pass-on the concept of paying it forward to the recipient.

The success of the initiative from the perspective of the joy that it brought to those in need, and the teamwork and togetherness it brought to the employees were the main driving factors to ensure the sustainability of this Pay It Forward initiative.

Since then, employees have gotten together and worked on varying projects including setting-up libraries, self-help family projects, repairs to homes, book-drives, food-drives, sponsorship of children and feeding of the street dwellers, to name a few.

In 2010 we worked with two schools in our business community and engaged their standard 5 students, helping them prepare for their transition to secondary school.  We sought to motivate and inspire them to excel in their endeavours while teaching them valuable life skills.  We also took on a story-telling project for the infant classes to foster the importance and enjoyment of reading.  This project earned us the distinguished honour of being nominated as a finalist for the Energy Chamber CSR Leadership Awards 2010 in the category “Strengthening Communities through Social Investment”. 

On the heels of such recognition, there could be no slowing down of our efforts for 2011.  Members of our San Fernando office assisted several persons in applying for government housing and disability grants.  In September, we completed our Back To School project in which we were able to outfit 16 children with all the necessary supplies for the new school year.  From pre-school to form three, we provided text books, note books, copy books, stationery and even school uniforms to ease the burden on the disadvantaged families.

At the beginning of November, we launched our BIG deed project – our largest effort to date.  It started as a simple request to assist a single mother raising five children, one of whom is disabled, with making the children’s wish for a Christmas Tree come true.  The more we learnt about their misfortune, the more we realised we could provide much more than a tree.  We had the opportunity to help this family transform their shell of a house into a home! 

With 44 volunteers, we formed six teams to tackle every room in the house.  We acquired materials including window fixtures, appliances, furniture, vinyl flooring, paint, curtains and even some household items.  The grand plan for Saturday 12th November 2011 – all teams would make the trek to Monkey Town in New Grant to invested the “sweat equity” to lay the flooring, install fixtures, assemble furniture, paint the rooms and do whatever it takes to provide the family with their home sweet home.

We look forward to 2012 and another year of building our communities.  We invite you to join us and Pay It Forward.