Switched on to volunteering

Since 2009 employee volunteers at Turner Broadcasting, have helped build schools and school buildings in Mali, Rwanda, Malawi, Ethiopia, Tanzania and Mozambique.

“Good schooling means that people can look forward to more than the simple life of their forefathers and we have already seen pupils going on to higher education and taking scholarships,” says Nick Hart, head of CSR for EMEA at the international broadcaster who runs the schools building programme as one of its main international projects.

“Working in partnership with ActionAid (and previously Plan International), Hart has co-ordinated a total of six volunteering projects. Hart maintains that an inclusive, responsible approach to business has always been the Turner way. A well-known philanthropist, media mogul Ted Turner set up Turner Broadcasting (now part of Time Warner) back in the 1970s and is the broadcaster behind pioneering 24 hours news channel CNN, kids’ channels Cartoon Network and Boomerang as well as Turner Classic Movies (TCM), among others.

As the producer of kids’ entertainment and a news channel Hart felt that working with children’s charities to aid developing nations was a natural fit.

The first building project began with Hart meeting with Plan International in 2008 to discuss ways the broadcaster could use its fund raising and volunteering initiatives to do something of long lasting benefit in EMEA. Between them they came up with the idea of building a school in Mali. Looking back even Hart admits that it was ‘bit of an experiment’.

“The first hurdle was advertising for volunteers,” explains Hart. He was inundated with 80 people applying for just 20 places. “While popular, I have to stress it’s not an easy option,” he emphasises. “People are required to work in very harsh conditions and temperatures, sometimes up to 45 degrees Celsius!”

The second part of the project involved everyone fundraising, not just to raise money for the build but also for school equipment and teacher training so volunteers each had the target of raising a minimum of £1000 as well as paying £600 towards their travel costs. The company donated the additional funds, paid the bulk of the trip costs and gave the volunteers five days volunteer leave.

Hart himself has been on all six trips and his previous career in entertainment PR has helped him a little along the way with fundraising (a number of celebrities have donated to the cause).

Hart stresses that the projects all use ‘proper architects and builders’ and that the volunteers are only allowed to do ‘safe’, if arduous, jobs like lifting bricks and mixing concrete.

Turner Broadcasting volunteers have just completed the building of a library in Mozambique with ActionAid. Their fundraising also helped furnish the library with books, furniture and equipment and it will serve over 130,000 people in the district.

Turner chose to work with ActionAid because their long term presence in the communities in which they work means that they are trusted and have an in-depth knowledge of local culture and the context to provide them with the appropriate support. Their local offices are staffed almost exclusively by nationals who are best placed to build strong relationships and they also work through local partners who are embedded in the communities, furthering the appropriateness and effectiveness of their projects. The projects are developed out of these relationships and formed in collaboration with the communities themselves to ensure their voices are heard and their priorities met.

What’s interesting is that while the Turner brands like Cartoon Network and CNN are well-known in many African cities, in the rural areas where they have built people generally have not had electricity or TV. Some may have mobile phones in remote areas but watching television is still a largely unknown activity. Hart believes the biggest challenge for the volunteers can be going to a rural village and seeing a lifestyle that tourists would never normally encounter. . “For some of the team it can be a big culture shock, but the payback for the volunteers is enormous,” he said. “The generosity of the people we’ve met is incredible. To see how people in other cultures live, to witness the lives of people who have never left their villages and have very different traditions, is eye-opening and very inspiring.”

The payback is big for the company too. He explains: “CNN regularly reports on developing countries and our staff create entertainment services for Africa so these experiences give our employees real insight into everyday life in countries that we serve.”
“It’s also important that we’re not just as an international company looking in from the outside and so spending time and leaving behind something really useful is good for everyone. The volunteering initiative also brings other benefits. “There are always a lot of talented photographers and videographers amongst the volunteers who take stunning images to cover the office walls and one year a team made a feature which aired on CNN’s Backstory show,” says Hart.

Hart believes that projects such as these are also good recruitment and retention tools. “Being a socially responsible broadcaster makes us attractive, particularly with younger people who are placing more importance on these aspects of a business,” he said. “It helps with our diversity strategy too which ensures that our services are popular and relevant for people from all sections of society by having staff as diverse as our audiences.”

The award-winning projects have huge board-level buy-in with executives across the company having already participated or planning to do so for the next project in 2016.

Each project is structured around a one-year cycle. So Hart will start advertising the 2016 project to employees this September and then volunteers will head out in March.

Details of the latest build are still under wraps but volunteers will be in full fundraising mode in time for Christmas. Hart has been impressed with the various ways staff have been fundraising, moving away from traditional sponsored events to using their skill sets instead. For example, selling their photography skills and one even exploiting their knowledge of London by instigating a series of ‘spooky walks’.

So far the programme has brought together staff from across EMEA who are located in offices from Stockholm to Dubai to Paris to Moscow who are thousands of miles apart and would never normally meet.

“In addition it throws together the most senior to the most junior people who have to live and work together in very basic conditions with almost no access to the outside world for a week, so ultimately the programme combines volunteering and corporate responsibility with staff development while providing an impressive and lasting legacy that helps the company establish deep roots in a developing market,” says Hart.

Now that’s the kind of CSR that needs broadcasting…