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Audit's Anchor-edible Action

The Finance Team from Birmingham Audit, from the Chief Executive Directorate, led by BEST Leader Dave Prentice really demonstrated belief by working jointly with “Anchor Staying Put”. Anchor are an organisation who work jointly with the Adults & Communities Directorate to seek to help vulnerable and older people to live independent lives within the community.

The idea came about at one of their BEST workshops. One of the action points arising from this was to organise a ‘team-building’ exercise. After much consultation within the team they finally agreed to carry out some sort of community based gardening exercise. This seemed to fit in nicely with the idea of ‘giving something back’ and the Council Priority of Making a Contribution; for the team having the opportunity to help the communities we live and work in was something they couldn’t wait to get involved in.

After a few false starts BEST Leader, Dave Prentice took the bull by the horns and directly contacted Adults & Communities, the Directorate for which he has overall audit responsibility, to see if they could assist in sourcing a project to work on. They got a positive response from Anchor, who found six service users who the team could help out.

The work itself was quite demanding (particularly for those not used to gardening!) but everyone mucked in to get things done. Over the course of the day the team managed to accumulate a staggering 50 bags of green refuse with their efforts. The whole team agreed that it was a very enjoyable experience, both in terms of helping to build team spirit and being able to make a difference (however small) to those people who needed it.

Our day was also made more pleasant by the people whose gardens they worked on, who were extremely welcoming and friendly. The feedback the team received was very positive and they seemed to really appreciate the work that had been done; this included a number of “thank you” calls both to Anchor and to Audit offices at The Wharf.

Any teams interested in getting involved in similar projects and looking for guidance should contact Dave Prentice via email.