Re-Building Lives With Stanhope Foundation

We are pleased to announce that Morrisroe Group is now a Stanhope Foundation Corporate Partner.

The foundation's mission is to provide hope through employment with a focus on helping Londoners to get into work. Recognising the positive impact that employment has on an individual’s health and wellbeing, it has selected three charities to receive support. These are St Mungo’s, The Prince’s Trust, and Maggie’s. Each charity addresses the unique employability needs of their service users: homeless people, young people and cancer patients respectively.

‍

Career Support

Corporate donations made to the foundation will contribute to specialist cancer in the workplace support sessions and specialist career advice sessions for people supported by Maggie’s.

Funds will also support the delivery of tailored coaching and employment support sessions to St Mungo's clients as well as fully funded level 1, 2 and 3 courses.

Grants will be applied to The Prince’s Trust, too, and will support its Development Awards programme for young people aged between 16 and 30. These awards can support the costs of course feed to level 3 along with tools, equipment and uniforms. Additionally, Stanhope funds will be used to enable the trust to run its Future Leaders programme.

Racing to Lisbon… Virtually!

The pandemic hugely impacted the fundraising plans of many of the charities we support. The Stanhope Foundation was able to find an effective digital solution which enabled us to take part in its first fundraising event: a virtual race from London to Lisbon.

Teams were required to race a total distance of 1,870 miles (the equivalent of travelling from London to Lisbon) over a period of six weeks, clocking up their miles digitally through Strava or another health app. Teams were allowed to walk, run, row, swim or cycle anywhere in the world as long as their miles were recorded and uploaded.

Over 70 teams took part in the Journey for Jobs race, including firms like MAKE architects, AKTII, AHMM, Wilson James and Arup.

Cantillon and Morrisroe each entered a team. Team Morrisroe included Morrisroe Group CEO Brian Morrisroe, Kingscote Design Managing Director Patrick Sharkey, Kingscote Design Office Manager Victoria Mazorra, Buyer James Stubbs and Communications Lead Davina Debidin. Cantillon’s team included Managing Director Paul Cluskey, Operations Director Paul Moody, Ed Blake, Greg Langrish and Will James.

Race updates were provided daily so that teams were able to see where they placed each day, pin-pointing their positions on a virtual map. A live feed of individual performances helped to stir up some competitive spirit amongst the many participants.

Cantillon began the race with the intention of winning, starting at a blistering pace and leading for most of the first week, followed closely by teams from MAKE and AKT II. A few digital glitches suffered by team Morrisroe meant the team was slower to start. But by the end of the first week, Morrisroe was in a respectable eighth place, in spite of the unusually wet and stormy May weather.

Cantillon ended up in first place, finishing the race in week four, and Morrisroe placed fifth overall, thanks to some notable performances from Brian Morrisroe and James Stubbs, who are both serious outdoor cyclists.

A stunning total distance of 91,633 miles was travelled by the participants – and importantly a significant sum was raised for the foundation.

‍