Responsible business case studies

Originally the architect’s office during the building of BA’s headquarters at Waterside, the British Airways Community Learning Centre at Heathrow has welcomed more than 50,000 visitors since it opened in 1999.

The centre primarily provides learning programmes for schools and community groups in and around the Heathrow area. The programmes focus on customer service training, languages, global and environmental education and ICT. All are designed around the theme of British Airways core business of aviation.

A 240 acre parkland site which is the largest public parkland that has been developed since Victorian times is used to enhance the delivery of the environmental education programmes for young people. The centre also has links with the British Airways Museum and hosts artefacts dedicated to the history of British Airways.

The Community Fund is the Co-op group’s grants scheme that helps local communities throughout the UK.  Since the group started the initiative in 1997, thousands of clubs, community groups and self-help organisations have benefited.

The way the scheme works is by committed members of The Co-operative Group who want to help improve the lives of others, donate part or all of their share of the profits. These members have already raised millions of pounds each year for all kinds of community projects.

In line with the democratic values of the business the decision on which groups to support is made by members. There are over 50 Area Committees made up of democratically elected members of The Co-operative Group who meet and decide on applications from their specific area. With their local knowledge, they are tasked with making the tough decisions on which projects to fund. These meetings are generally held every other month. 

Enterprise4All has commissioned a detailed report examining the role of entrepreneurship in promoting community cohesion in Whalley Range in Blackburn. It is entitled "Enterprise as a Catalyst for Community Cohesion - A Research Study into Inter-Community Collaboration through Business". It compares the area with other areas of the North West, (Rusholme Manchester, Chinatown Manchester and Chinatown Liverpool) and seeks to provide an insight into how these areas gained and have maintained their profile, and how their commercial activity has contributed to community cohesion.

Case studies illustrated that community cohesion is an evolving process and can take many years. However the influence of commercial activity can catalyse the process and offer the resident community the opportunity to engage with the wider community and therefore advance the aims of cohesion more rapidly. This activity can, however, create new challenges. There was unanimous agreement by the consulted groups that enterprise is a key to improved interaction between communities.

Eversheds 'Give and Gain' day is based around Business in the Community's annual employee volunteering event. Eversheds staff were joined by volunteers from across the business community working in teams with schools and community organisations on projects aimed at improving cities. The activities aimed to give back to the communities in which they work in a range of ways from helping children raise their reading skills through literacy programmes to raising awareness of work opportunities.

Over 400 members of staff took part in 41 projects community projects worldwide.

Eversheds is taking part in the College of Law/ Sutton Trust’s joint venture called Pathway to Law. Within Eversheds it is known as ‘Eversheds Unlocked’. This programme is designed to give young people (aged 16-18) who have potential and an interest in law, but who normally would not consider university due to social, economic and /or other cultural backgrounds, the support to successfully apply to university to study for a degree .

The three day programme is designed to not only ‘demystify law’ and what a career in law ( at Eversheds) could mean to them, but how it could help them achieve the things they want in life, along with looking at the skills they might need to develop and challenges they might have to overcome to achieve the success they want.