How could corporate volunteering benefit your team? David Siddall shares his team's recent volunteering experience at Sutton Community Farm.
Recently, 22 of us from the Mayor's External Relations team embarked on a day of volunteering at Sutton Community Farm. We were the latest of more than 1,500 volunteers at the farm in the last four years.
The day started off fairly gently with a tour of the farm, an insight into food growing and a run-through of the help given to the local community.
We were soon put to work however, on what proved to be a sweaty but ultimately rewarding day of physical work.
Tasks involved preparing beds for planting, harvesting an absolute mountain of onions, and battling weeds up to our armpits in an enormous corn patch (you think you’re better than me?!).
It was amazing to see how much could be achieved with 20 plus people working together as a team.
Perhaps the highlight of the day was the opportunity to pick our own ingredients and make pizzas in the farm’s wood fire oven.
The vegetables were so juicy and a quantum leap tastier than anything you would typically find in the supermarket.
Lunch was a great time to bond and unearth things we didn’t know about each other.
Having witnessed a great rendition of Daydream Believer by Brian, we soon discovered that both Alice (in the marketing team) and Anis (intern in the web team) also had until-now-hidden musical talents.
It’s hard to quantify how much the day benefited our team and its morale.
My personal opinion is that coming together and physically seeing the fruits (vegetables!) of our labour made it far more satisfying than your typical “away day”.
Anis, Headstart intern in the web team, described it as, “a wonderful day where challenging exercise was made enjoyable because of lovely people working together. The vegetables were pretty damn awesome too.”
Brian, Senior Events Officer, thought “It was great. At the end, there was a real sense we’d all pulled together to achieve something. It was a fun and enjoyable day.”
Thank you to Sutton Community Farm!
We would like to say a huge thank you to Joris and Charlotte at Sutton Community Farm for making our day so memorable. We would certainly recommend a visit.
If you live fairly locally, you can also support the farm by getting your hands on their delicious fresh veggies.
Would your team benefit from a volunteering day?
There are loads of opportunities out there to choose from and they are very simple to organise. Team London helped us find a great activity to do and I’m sure they can do the same for you.
What are you waiting for? Volunteer!
Browse corporate volunteering opportunities on Team London today