Growing teams and community at Growing Well

Companies that contribute positively to their local communities play a vital role in building stronger, more resilient societies whilst promoting employee fulfilment and increased morale.

At Altrad, we call this type of activity ‘social value’. Recently, a group of Altrad colleagues spent a day supporting the work of Growing Well West Cumbria, an incredible Egremont-based charity in England that helps people with moderate to severe mental health issues, growing food, much of which is given to those most in need locally.

Growing Well West Cumbria has been open for less than a year, and utilises a dis-used and overgrown Council site. It relied heavily on our volunteers to transform the space to be useful and then get it up and running at full capacity.

Our ten Altrad volunteers who attended:

• Built two huge new growing beds.
• Created a network of woodchip pathways.
• Harvested 16kg of kale and salad leaves.
• Transported compost across the site.

The beds created were planted up by the charity’s mental health clients the following day.

The produce that we harvested was sold to Tebay Services, to be used in its shop and restaurant, thereby raising much-needed funds to continue the charity’s vital work.

As well as being beneficial for Growing Well, the day was good for our volunteers. Being out in nature has well-known benefits for wellbeing; it was also a great opportunity for our people to work together as a team on something completely different from their day-to-day work, while meeting new Altrad colleagues. Our volunteers noted that the day was ‘fulfilling; good to spend the day helping others’ and ‘great to find out about good work that’s going on locally.’

Everyone walked away from the day knowing that they had made a positive difference to people’s lives. Incredible work from all involved!

If you would like to find out more about Growing Well, check out their website here.