At SITA, we believe in the power of giving back and making a positive impact on the communities around us. That's why we've made it our mission to support humanitarian and sustainability projects that make a difference in people's lives.
As part of our recent contract signed with Heathrow, there has been a deep-seated focus on sustainability, which included the creation of a Sustainability Lead role, someone who will work with suppliers, procurement, CSR teams, and Heathrow Airport. Their priority is to report and deliver on requirements that match overall SITA goals, and Heathrow’s ‘Balanced Scorecard’.
Heathrow Airport is committed to achieving net zero by 2050, and to making big changes to achieve that target before 2030. Their ‘Balanced Scorecard’ directly links supply-chain requirements and measurements to Heathrow’s 2.0 Sustainability Strategy.
Heathrow established five pillars as the basis of the Scorecard’s measurements:
- Behaviors
- Carbon
- Community
- Social value
- Solutions improvements
After setting up this initiative the various teams will work together as volunteers in local communities to make a difference and add social value.
The SITA Sustainability Lead, Jay Lidder, worked with Heathrow Community Trust and the SITA Health & Safety and Wellbeing team to use a newsletter to put out a call to identify local community projects that could use volunteering help. SITA received requests from 20 different organizations, including schools, charities, and food banks.
In our first collaboration, 18 volunteers, made up of SITA staff from the Heathrow team and Heathrow colleagues from the Compass Centre, helped a local school refurbish outside play areas for children. Over two days two teams of volunteers went to Langley Hall Primary Academy. They worked at two school sites, helping the caretaker improve areas like the children’s playground, which were unusable, and helped tidy up other communal areas.
The volunteers focused on gardening, weeding, cleaning, painting fences, and putting up privacy screens. The two teams spent 216 hours working at the school, which saved the caretaker over two months of work! This team effort will make a real difference for the staff, and for the children at the school.
It was a great effort by everyone, and notable that it happened during National Volunteering Week. The teams received great feedback from attendees and the school staff on the impact it had. There was an immense sense of personal satisfaction in helping a local school and being able to use the SITA VIVA Day to give something back to local communities.
The SITA team at Heathrow will be continuing with this initiative by setting up more Volunteering days for other requests for help that were sent to the team. And a huge thank you to all the volunteers who attended from SITA, Heathrow Airport, the Heathrow Community Trust, and Langley Hall Academy School.