Deloitte has run our Community Days for nearly 10 years, engaging over 17,000 of our people to support in excess of 1,000 projects.

In FY15, we started to concentrate on the issues of employability and social mobility, focusing our efforts on sections of society who are facing difficult times, such as the long-term unemployed.

This year, over 900 of our people have been involved in 75 community workshops and we have worked with a variety of organisations around the country. A good example of this is Volunteering Matters, a not-for-profit organisation that runs a volunteering programme — City Wise — to encourage unemployed people aged 50-65 to lead activities that can make difference in their communities.

A Deloitte team ran an interview skills workshop for 11 unemployed City-Wise volunteers. The workshop helped people who have been out of work for many years to re-discover their self-confidence to take on leadership roles in voluntary sector projects. Such projects, while designed to benefit the local community, can also lead to future employment opportunities. The interview skills sessions we held were part of a full training programme to enable the volunteers to find work where possible and, in the interim, to lead community programmes themselves.

The participants now feel more confident about finding a job and more positive about themselves and their future. All the community partners praised the Deloitte volunteers for their professionalism and enthusiasm, and said they have had a long-lasting impact on the participants.

Sue King, Volunteering Matters City-Wise Project Development Officer for training, said: