Community

Head Office London:
Charity of The Year 2022-23 – Haven House Children’s Hospice

CMC Markets is proud to support Haven House Children’s Hospice, our 2022-23 charity of the year. When we asked our London employees to vote for the charity that they would like to support, Haven House Children’s Hospice was the people’s choice.

The east London-based charity was founded in the early 1990s with the aim of providing specialist care to life-limited children, as well as offering support to their families. Today, Haven House does a tremendous job looking after children and young people from birth to 19 years old who have life-limiting or life-threatening conditions.

Their mission is to give seriously ill children a better life experience, helping them to live their childhood as fully as possible. Haven House has supported hundreds of families by arranging play activities, treatments, as well as day and overnight stays. They also provide support for the children’s parents and siblings.

In 2000 Haven House acquired a lease on the White House, a locally listed former family home set in four acres of protected woodland, making it a homely and tranquil environment for the children. In September 2014 Haven House opened their Holistic Care Centre which offers a range of therapies, including music therapy, physiotherapy, and therapeutic yoga.

Having pledged £50,000 to mark the start of our partnership with Haven House, CMC Markets has been delighted to drive further engagement between our employees and staff at the charity. We have arranged a number of opportunities for our employees to volunteer at Haven House, and it is our ambition to build on this relationship by continuing to offer our support, creating more volunteering opportunities for CMC staff, and holding further fundraising initiatives.

Head Office London:
Charity of The Year 2020-21 – Action for Children

Action for Children (A4C), helps more than 300,000 children, young people, parents and carers
through 650 projects across the UK. They have been helping vulnerable children and young people break through deprivation and inequality for almost 150 years. A4C believe all children and young people have unique potential and that they should have the support and, opportunities they need to reach it.

CMC Markets London Office is supporting the London Independent Visitor (IV), scheme. An Independent Visitor – possibly the only person in the child’s life that is not paid to support them in some way, ie Foster Carer, Social Worker or Teacher, visits the young person at least once a month and is there on the end of a telephone to offer counsel and advice at other times.

Plans were made for a calendar of events for 2020 but Covid19 put an end to most activities. In April 2020 we sent a payment to A4C for £50,000 as it was clear all charities would suffer during the first Lockdown. Fundraising; we managed to take part in 2 Secret Santa events (2019 & 2020) and our Deputy CEO took part in Boycott Your (his) Bed event – he slept the night in his car!! To compensate for the lack of fundraising CMC Markets finalised the partnership making the final sponsorship for the year to £70,000.

We are proud to support have Action for Children and the London Independent Visitor Scheme through our Head Office London Charity of The Year scheme.

2020 was a year to devastate the income on which charities survive and at the same time they needed to adapt to deliver services online for those that could and for others, the struggle of only face to face support started.

In response CMC Markets plc Board approved a 3 year charity support partnership of £800,000 to help young people achieve more from Primary School Age to becoming Work Ready both in London and Sydney, Australia.

Last year we continued to be the sole sponsor of Making The Leap Employment Fare 2020 but as with most things the event was very different and went online. We were able to support students through online videos and 1 to 1 sessions via Zoom. Charities had to adapt to the “New Normal” of online delivery models. Making The Leap managed this and this demonstrates their determination to help young disadvantaged people when they most needed support in this ever changing world.

CMC Sydney completed the fourth year of partnership with its corporate charity Learning Links, who provide support to children with learning disabilities and difficulties. We continued our volunteering commitment through the Counting for Life programme, which saw 12 staff providing one-on-one maths tutoring over a ten-week period during the school term. The significant improvements seen in the children’s results is a testament to the benefit of the programme and the impact our staff are having on the development of the children.

With the ever-changing world in which we work CMC Markets will commence replacing the office based computers with more suitable equipment to allow flexible working.

This has resulted in around 200+ PCs being recycled/reused in the London Office alone – more throughout our other offices worldwide.

A company has been sourced that will recycle the machines but instead of CMC Markets being paid a unit price for each PC we have agreed that the recycled machines be reused and made ready for donation to educational bodies and community charities/groups complete with a Microsoft Windows 10 operating system.

We are encouraging these groups to consider using the machines to set up mini PC suites to help disadvantaged people in our community. The London Office IT Department has volunteers that will help set these suites up if required. There has been a great interest in this already and the programme of reusing that will commence in July 2021.

Our colleagues throughout our offices worldwide, support many charities and charitable causes both local to the community in which we operate and nationally. To encourage/support this, CMC Markets plc will match funds raised from CMC Colleagues on a £4£ ($4$) basis.

In addition to support staff in charitable and community activities a Charitable Annual Leave Day is available to all staff.