For August, there are two Volunteers of the Month: Nomura’s Emily Massey and Prijanka Jain. Emily and Priyanka lead a Team Challenge at Willow Brook Primary School where they were tasked with designing and painting a new school mural on one of the playground walls. The wall previously had a basic design and was white washed at the end of the school year. With an open brief to design the mural around the school’s motto, the team leaders went away and started planning. This team really went above and beyond by spending this time beforehand coming up with the mural design. They found hidden creative talents in the team and gained a lot more from their volunteering experience by doing this. The end result and quality of the mural speaks for itself.

We caught up with Emily and Prijanka to find out about their volunteering experience:

Why did you volunteer?
We are members of Nomura’s Operations Charity and Social Committee where we organise cross-team volunteering days for our staff. At Nomura we are all entitled to 2 volunteering days a year which we are actively encouraged to use. Nomura is highly focused on creating a positive impact within the community and in particular supporting young children. This opportunity to paint a mural at Willow Brook Primary School was the perfect way for us to make the playground a much more welcoming and inspiring place for the children. Nomura has a strong partnership with ELBA and we work closely together on various hands-on volunteering opportunities to make a positive change in the east London community and in hand, improve and develop the skills of our staff. In the past we have collaborated on an array of different projects to help give back including Age UK where Nomura put on an activities day, including Christmas card making, cupcake decorating and Bingo and Stepney Farm where our volunteers helped to build climbing apparatus for the baby goats – all have been very fun & rewarding!

What did you gain from your volunteering experience?
Initially we were worried about the level of our artistic abilities! But once we gathered our volunteers it was nice to see the keenness of the group and their commitment to making the mural a success. They all pulled on their key skills, leveraged each other’s strengths and came up with a fabulous space-themed design (after many sketches!) in line with the school’s motto, ‘We strive for higher things.’ Further to this they meticulously planned in advance for bad weather, painting supplies, scalings and all the other very important details. People definitely found some hidden creative talents! Given that this was a cross department volunteering day it also opened up lots of networking opportunities for our staff and the chance to establish new relationships. It was really nice to see everyone working together in a setting that was very different from our day to day and to take time out of their busy workday to make a difference in the community. On the day it was a real team effort and each member who contributed felt a genuine sense of achievement for what we had managed to produce!

Would you recommend volunteering to a colleague and if so then why?
Definitely!

All of our past volunteering days have been fun and rewarding and we would encourage anyone to get involved not just our staff! Volunteering helps to develop team building, planning and time management skills, creates networking opportunities and new relationships and beyond anything you are helping to give back and develop communities so it is a win-win situation! We think it is important to step away from your day to day occasionally to make a difference and put things in perspective.