Barclays reaches out to the more vulnerable |04 February 2014

The Barclays Seychelles Choir carried out a volunteering activity on Saturday at the School for the Exceptional Child at Roche Caiman and also donated to the school the prize they won in the Office Choir musical challenge hosted by the SBC last December.

The prize money of R10, 000 was used to purchase kitchen equipment and utensils, which the school identified as a necessity to help them improve their home economic classes.

The kitchen equipment included a refrigerator, a cooker, a fryer, a hand mixer and a kitchen scale.

The volunteering activity involved refurbishing work, including painting of the home economics and computer rooms, adding murals.

In addition, the firm donated some furniture that will be used to furnish these rooms, as a gesture of its support for the colleague initiative.

The donation was handed over by Collin Dubignon, a member of the Barclays Seychelles Choir, to Heidi Francourt, the school’s head teacher in the presence of teachers, students and parents of the pupils.

“I would like to thank Barclays for their nice gesture and I do hope that this collaboration between the bank and the school remains. Your support will help us teachers assist our students and help them to persevere in their education,” Mrs Francourt said.

Later this week, precisely on Thursday, the colleagues will devote a couple of hours, in work time, teaching the students how to bake, an activity that Barclays allows colleagues to do (equivalent of two working days a year, under the Colleague Volunteering Programme).

The objective of this activity is to engage with the physically-challenged youth, providing them with life and enterprise skills, namely teach them to bake and earn an income via sales of their produce, and eventually how to manage their money.

In a press statement managing director of Barclays Seychelles, Rakesh Jha, commented: “Barclays is delighted to be, once again, supporting worthy causes, in line with our citizenship agenda, to truly make a difference to the more vulnerable members of our society. These donations demonstrate our continued commitment to helping our local communities achieve their ambitions in the right way.”

Colleen Morel, head of citizenship, added: “We continue to encourage our colleagues to actively participate in volunteering activities where they give time to share personal and/or professional skills,  that make meaningful and lasting impacts in the lives of the communities we interact with. Via this initiative, we will be empowering the youth with new skills, and helping them to become more confident and independent.”