Our Pilotlight Impact Day programme gives our Partner Businesses the opportunity to take direct action, through mass skilled volunteering, to tackle a cause that is close to the business’ heart.
Earlier this year we held a Pilotlight Impact Day that brought together colleagues at one of our Partner Businesses to help tackle challenges faced by charities tackling food poverty. Teams from across the business shared their industry expertise to help find solutions for the charities attending.
James Burton, Project Director at Miracles, shares his experience of Pilotlight Impact Day
Miracles supports children and their families living in poverty and helps them through crisis situations such as serious illness.
The Feed London Project is our response to the food crisis taking place amongst London’s children, living in poverty and facing significant hardship, over the school holidays, when food poverty is at its most critical.
Launched at Christmas 2020 amid the Covid crisis, we initially focused on supporting isolated families severely impacted by pandemic restrictions. Since then, our impact has grown significantly, providing over 48,000 individual meals to more than 2,000 families, nurturing almost 5,000 children across London's ten boroughs with the highest rates of child poverty in the UK.
At the heart of Feed London lies a comprehensive support package:
- Nutritious food boxes containing super fresh and healthy ingredients for six plus balanced main meals, accompanied by child-friendly recipes
- A £50 supermarket voucher to supplement stretched family budgets, and engaging creative activities for children.
We carefully design the boxes to ensure children have a really healthy start to the school holidays and to ignite in them a lifelong love for cooking.
Since spring 2022, our referral partners have been warning us about the escalating cost of living crisis. For families already struggling with poverty, the situation has become dire: mounting debt, unpaid bills, job losses, and increased housing costs. Parents are skipping meals, homes are going unheated, and fridges remain empty. Depression and isolation are on the rise. Worst of all for those families with children undergoing treatment for serious and life threatening illness.
Why Pilotlight Impact Day?
As a small charity getting the visibility and access to the business expertise that Pilotlight Impact Day offered was something we couldn’t pass up.
My only stipulation was that the day was practical for me – that I could walk away with something I could implement and that would bring results.
I’m pleased to say the programme delivered!
How would you describe how the day went?
What can I say - just a truly wonderful and unexpected day - and very emotional.
Despite my initial apprehensions about working with such a large Partner Business, Pilotlight’s careful planning ensured there was an inclusive environment throughout the day. This was crucial for me, as a friendly atmosphere enables creativity and positive interaction.
The day's success stemmed from the Pilotlighter team's genuine motivation. Every participant was committed to making a meaningful difference - focused on developing practical, real-world solutions rather than simply having a pleasant day. Pilotlight's professional facilitation was key, maintaining a structured agenda while creating space for comprehensive input and collaborative problem-solving.
They created an environment where I could fully articulate Feed London’s needs and expectations, and the Pilotlighter team could respond comprehensively.
I would highly recommend Pilotlight to any organisation considering similar collaborative charity initiatives, as their approach ensures productive, impactful engagement.
What have been the results/implementation after the project?
I think the number one result was the motivation it has given me – meeting business professionals who get what we are trying to do, who give me such positive and encouraging feedback – who went on to provide exactly what I was looking for - it gave me a tremendous boost and a renewed sense of purpose.
The day helped me win a new client by implementing some of the strategy we worked on – to get the benefits in earlier in proposal and to structure the proposal based on our shared needs.
I came out of the day with a target list of potential business partners (with names and emails), a strategy to implement the initiative and a fantastic set of creative ideas to initiate the partnerships.
I have a new part-time support worker joining next week who will help follow up on the ideas.
What are your top tips for charities thinking of applying to Pilotlight Impact Day?
- Be clear about what you want to get out of the day. Make it practical and something you can easily implement.
- Stay positive and super friendly – it has to be enjoyable or else what’s the point?
- Be enthusiastic about all responses, even the ones that don’t meet what you were hoping for – it might be that you haven’t been clear enough in your brief so take time to reiterate your needs and how the teams/s can help.
- Be thankful for the opportunity.