Thompson Taraz’s Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) initiatives include supporting educational programmes as well as encouraging employee engagement and volunteering. Over the years we have donated to charities both in Africa and at home, and employees play an active role in charity selection as well as fundraising activities.

Abroad we have regularly supported Ripple Africa’s Pre School project for 16 years. Ripple Africa is a charity based in Northern Malawi , one of the poorest countries on the continent, and the charity estimates that over 4,500 students have now benefited from the eight pre-schools they run. We also support Educating the Children (ETC), a UK registered charity which set up the first public secondary boarding school for girls in the Masai Mara and which has since been handed back to the local community. The charity is currently running a “Code Queen” project in Uganda, encouraging young women to gain 21st century coding and technology skills.

Staff at Thompson Taraz also vote on a new national charity to support every 6 months. Charity nominations are made by employees based either on personal experience, charities close to their heart or simply the desire to support a worthy cause. We are proud to have supported Crisis, Macmillan Cancer Support, Mayhew, Shine, St Christopher’s hospice, Centrepoint and the Evelina Smiles campaign amongst many others over the years. More recently we have chosen to support The Maurice Jagger Centre, which was set up by an employee’s grandfather, providing a much-needed venue for community groups to meet, in particular disabled and elderly groups from the Halifax area.

In lieu of a staff Christmas party we also donated our party costs to St Mungo’s homelessness charity, who work tirelessly to help transform the lives of those experiencing homelessness, and even more so in these current times.