Above photo – Alistair and Armando, Co Chairs of the Mazars ‘London Community Champions’

For this month’s CSR Profile, we’re shining the spotlight on Mazars, where we hear from Armando and Alistair – Co Chairs of the Mazars ‘London Community Champions’.

Please provide a short outline of your current role and a brief description of any other relevant career experience
In essence our roles as Co Chairs of the London Community Champions is to ensure that the Mazars London Office gives back to our local community in the most effective way possible.

We manage a team of fellow Community Champions to brainstorm volunteering and fundraising ideas to help those most in need in the East London Community.

We then take these ideas and bring them to life in the form of volunteering days and national charity weeks for all our staff members to enjoy.

Why is CSR important to your organisation?
Mazars recognises its commitment as a responsible corporate citizen and to make sustainable business decisions. That’s the basis of our Mazars for Good strategy! We also want to be a force for good in our communities. That’s part of the reason why we joined Mazars in the first place!

Which topics, themes or initiatives are your organisation currently focused on?

Our most recent initiative was to encourage our colleagues to donate their used laptops to schoolchildren who may not have access to the IT equipment they need to learn from home.

With schools remaining closed, education for the majority of children has switched to a digital format. However, according to Ofcom, an estimated 9% of children in the UK don’t have access to a laptop, desktop or a tablet at home. We are therefore helping make it easier for our colleagues to donate by liaising with organisations such as Business2Schools and LetsLocalise. This follows from our recent Back to School fundraising initiative with the Capital City College Group (CCCG) were we raised funds to buy laptops for some of their disadvantaged students. Our colleagues volunteered to lead classes on various topics, including cooking, high intensity interval training and juggling. Many more colleagues donated towards laptops for disadvantaged students to join the classes, and it was all great fun!

On a more local scale, we have recently mobilised our London colleagues to help support The Forget Me Not Project which we learned about through ELBA. The Forget Me Not Project supports older people suffering with Alzheimer’s, dementia or other memory disorders. We coordinated volunteers to join ELBA’s session that helped them create a simple puzzle that was included in care packages being sent to the group.

What is the best part of your job?
Armando: My “day job” is Consulting, in which I help our clients face their challenges more effectively. Be it through helping them make their processes more efficient, ensuring their teams are working effectively together, or managing their change journeys, I get to solve problems while learning about new organisations and industries.

Alistair: On a day to day basis I work as an Assistant Manager in audit which involves managing audit teams and working with a wide range of clients and people. Meeting so many different diverse groups of people and new businesses is the aspect of my day job I love the most.

Alistair and Armando: As Community Champions we get to dedicate our time to organising fundraising events, helping our colleagues make the most of volunteering opportunities and even helping select charities for Mazars to support. In short, our job is to help our colleagues support local charities and our community which we find rewarding and meaningful. Who knew you could do all this whilst working in professional services!