This story was submitted as part of the #Pledge1Gives GivingTuesday campaign, which celebrates the many ways our member companies are having an impact around the world.
Our purpose at Charter Hall is to secure a better future for all. This year, as we celebrate #GivingTuesday, we’d like to share how we used a humble jigsaw puzzle to symbolise the grave impact violence has on women, children and families in Australia, and raise funds for domestic violence shelters.
A Pledge 1% pioneer
Charter Hall’s values focus on thinking bigger, doing better and going further to create value. Community has been a vital part of how we give back for many years. It’s incredibly important to us that we support the communities in which we operate, connect with them and positively benefit them.
So it’s not surprising that we were the first Australian property company to join Pledge 1% in 2017, aiming to give up to one percent of our people’s time, space in our places and our profits to our community partners.
Two Good + Charter Hall = a lot of good
One of those community partners is social enterprise, Two Good.Co which directly assists survivors and women’s refuges with the generous help of Australian culinary superstars like Neil Perry and Maggie Beer. It’s grown from an ad-hoc roadside barbeque to an organisation that delivers meals across 26 communities nationally.
“We are delighted and privileged to partner with Two Good. We take our responsibility of giving back seriously,” says Greg Chubb, Charter Hall’s Retail CEO. “One in four women in Australia experience domestic violence at some point, and many of them end up in refuges whilst they work through this very challenging time in their lives,”
“Two Good is doing extraordinary work in supporting these shelters and the women in them, and Charter Hall is honoured to be able to support Two Good to reach into regional Australia.”
Delivering more good than ever
Our “Delivering Good” campaign with Two Good brought a powerful social message home in a very simple way. We engaged 26 of our retail centres to raise awareness about domestic violence and the wider community’s vital role in supporting survivors to rebuild their lives by hosting giant jigsaw puzzles. Shoppers were then encouraged to add to the puzzle, symbolising the way domestic violence survivors rebuild their lives piece by piece, and the way in which the wider community can help.
Every piece represented a meal which was donated to the local community and there were ambassadors on hand to discuss the campaign as well as the topic of domestic violence with shoppers.
“We had a lot of our tenant and retail customers engage with us on the topic of domestic violence and how important it is”, says Margot Black, Head of Sustainability and Community at Charter Hall. “They found it fantastic that we were focusing on the issue and providing education on it.”
The twenty thousand pieces transformed into 20,000 meals for domestic violence shelters – Two Good’s biggest ever donation to date. The meals themselves went directly to shelters and refuges close to our retail centres.
But the benefits didn’t end there. The campaign also resulted in women who had been directly affected by domestic violence being trained and employed by Two Good to deliver the meals out to communities.
Our one percent commitment
Partnerships are an important pillar of the Pledge 1% initiative at Charter Hall. We work closely with national partners and local community groups, to create a positive impact for our people, customers, environment and local communities in which we operate.
Community involvement for us is about participating in programs and activities and services where we can touch and feel the impact we’re making. We want to create a meaningful place for our tenants to work and customers to visit, and for all our people.
Building communities of the future
Although the Delivering Good campaign may be over, our partnership with Two Good continues to flourish.
We introduced Two Good’s beautiful bathroom products to shoppers in our retail centres. For every product sold, we give one to a domestic violence shelter. In our offices we also have Two Good Thursdays where all catering is provided by Two Good. And we have a regular Tuesday morning breakfast, where the muesli provided to our employees across Australia are provided by Two Good as well.
Margot Black, again: “The power of community lies in finding creative and effective ways to work together. We believe we’ve found that through our partnership with Two Good and our involvement with Pledge 1%, we’re able to build stronger communities and better futures for so many Australians.”
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