x
Our biggest project to date was for one of our customers, Mill View care home. It’s a home that works very hard to make life for their residents more enjoyable and they do their utmost to bring the local community inside for the people who can no longer go outside. The employees there have put in lots of hard work into achieving their vision of making the home a fun and vibrant place to live in. They have created an enjoyable and even recognisable space for the residents, many of whom have dementia.
The employees have built a shop for the residents to work in and buy snacks and essentials and there is also a cinema. All the work they have done has been funded by selling snacks, cakes and raffle tickets. What they have achieved with this little funding over just 18 months is really humbling.
The latest project the team have worked on is an American diner style café where residents and their family and friends can go to enjoy tea, cakes and sandwiches away from the usual `lounge’ rooms. Outside the café doors is a lovely garden space which ACS have helped to regenerate. The garden is very much a continuation of the café and is perfect for the residents to sit and relax but where they can also work and help maintain the garden.
Many of the ACS employees have been involved in the garden regeneration project, spending a whopping collective 306 hours (250 hours in work time and 56 hours outside of work) designing, sourcing goods, gardening, jet washing, sanding and painting furniture.
The garden regeneration was challenging for our first project and took 35 litres of paint, 7 tonnes of soil, 2 tonnes of bark, 1,205 stone of sleepers- the equivalent to our entire workforce and ½ tonne of gravel.
The result of this hard labour is a colourful, sensory garden with a water feature. There is a strawberry and herb garden which residents can help maintain as it was designed for chair height, lots of seating for the diners (including memorial benches) and loads of other bright features to attract the birds and butterflies.
We think you’ll agree that the transformation is fantastic and fits well with the retro diner theme. The design was created by one of the talented Account Executives here at ACS, Brian Comber. He took inspiration from the existing colours inside the diner to make the garden as colourful as possible for the residents. Dave Renaud, of our Managed Print Services division, then headed up the gardening part of the project. His expertise and faultless enthusiasm were essential to make the vision a reality.
We are so proud that this amazing care home was the first ACS CSR project and will be the first of many. Special thanks must go to Shipley College and Kate Falkingham from Brother for their volunteering and Keelham Farm shop, On the Dot Skips, Estate Sawmill and The Canal and River Trust for their kind donations.
“The residents at Mill View are absolutely loving being able to spend time with their friends and family in the garden and this has a huge positive impact on their well-being being able to spend time engaging with others in such a magnificent place. The garden is really more than we could have ever have hoped for.” - Tee Tatum, Manager, Mill View Care Home.
We value giving back to the community dearly at ACS - we strive to maintain and improve our reputation of being a well-respected, responsible Yorkshire organisation.
Our considerable growth over the years has enabled us to set up a number of schemes to ensure we give back to the community as much as we can. From donating returned stock to local good causes, to our volunteering initiative where our employees get hands on with projects within local communities – we’re not afraid to get our hands dirty. Our vision is to be a company that customers recommend, suppliers want to work with and employees are proud of.
Check out our latest news section to find out more about our most recent community projects:
Our latest newsEverything from the milk we buy for our tea drinkers to the valet servicing we select for our car owners is a considered and deliberate choice. We work closely with our suppliers on many projects and no job is too big- from our signage to our business insurance we keep it local.
1 DAY
We commit 1 day each month for every colleague who wants to volunteer
As of 2019 we have pledged to volunteer for at least 4 different projects within our local community. ACS will dedicate at least 4 working days per person every year out of the office for work on different community projects. We are working together to improve the lives of local people on a project in the local community each quarter.
Our biggest project to date was for one of our customers, Mill View Care home.
At ACS we hate to see waste so rather than throw stock away we give returned stock to local causes that can use products. We have recently given away £1,000 worth of coloured card to a local school to use in arts and crafts activities.