Ann Coffey

Good Afternoon,

I want to start by saying how delighted I am to be here today –

And to thank you for the impressive work your vast army of “community champions” are doing to make a difference to the lives of local people.

I think it’s fair to say you are fast becoming community leaders as well as corporate leaders.

There is a golden thread that runs through British history of common endeavour for the common good.  Many years ago the idea of neighbourliness and helping others was woven into the way we led our lives.

Here at Manchester Airport the concept of “community champions” works on the same principle - that pooling effort and resources will always deliver more than individuals working on their own.

The British way has always been much more than self interested individualism. This was recognised, even by those philosophers associated with free market ideas like Adam Smith and Samuel Smiles. They knew that prosperity and improvement must be founded on a sense of social obligation and a broad moral commitment to civic improvement.

Your many efforts to engage and help members of the local community reflects what I believe is a new ethic that is alive and growing in the corporate sector in Britain.

Britain is now leading the way in corporate social responsibility with:
Managers who want to show that the bottom line for business is not only making money but doing good as well;
Company directors who understand that reputation and success depends on the investments made not just in new products but in the communities you serve;
And employees of companies who want not just to be employees but to contribute to a better society.
Corporate social responsibility starts from the view that each of us has a talent and each of us has responsibilities we owe to each other, so that the talents of our country are put to better use.
The modern view is that trust and reputation are critical to business success.
Your companies here at Manchester Airport have been ahead of that trend.

The Chancellor Gordon Brown and Prince Charles hosted a conference on corporate and social responsibility in Whitehall last month.
The Chancellor said that corporate social responsibility is not an add on, a side show or incidental, but integral, mainstream and at the heart of what you do – It’s the smart solution for business today: recognition that in the modern world, the good economy and the good society go together.
Indeed, theory and evidence shows that societies with strong voluntary sectors and civic society institutions have lower crime, greater social cohesion and better performing economies than those without.
VOLUNTEERING
In recognition of this – the Government has taken a number of steps to build up and promote the voluntary sector and volunteering since 1997.
There are now more voluntary organisations at work for our communities today than ever before
- There are more than 150,000 registered charities
- And 200,000 non-charitable voluntary and community organisatIons.
The idea of volunteering - which is at the heart of your work as Community Champions - fits in with the Government’s Respect Agenda – there is no better example of respect than voluntary activity. When individuals give their time to the wider community it benefits both the recipients of that help and those who give it. After all - who would want to live in a world where all our relationships were defined by paid contracts?

The Institute for Volunteering Research estimates that 22 million adults are involved in volunteering each week. And one in two adults regularly volunteers at least once a month,
The government sees voluntary, community and charitable organisations as a Third Sector ready to work in partnership with the market and the state.
To show his commitment to civic renewal, the Prime Minister recently created the new Office of the Third Sector with its own minister Ed Milaband.
The Treasury and Cabinet Office are currently running a joint review of the third sector. And the Office of the Third Sector is developing both a social enterprise action plan and a public service delivery action plan.
The government aims to boost the numbers of young people volunteering by one million over the next five years – And you have certainly made an excellent start here at Manchester Airport with employees encouraged to use two days of work time each year to volunteer – and I understand that since March 2004, 2,500 of your hours have been donated so far to volunteering locally.
A Mori poll showed that 59 per cent of 15 to 24 year olds want to know more about how to get involved in their communities.
So I believe we have a goodwill mountain just waiting to be tapped. I would urge you all that now is the time to scale up your activities raise your ambition higher and make even more of a difference.
The government has founded a new national youth community service – called "V," which has more than 35 corporate partners and is on course to reach the target of one million new volunteers over the next five years.

It is the first public private partnership of its kind anywhere in the world, matching private sponsorship with up to £100 million of public investment to transform quantity, quality and diversity of volunteering opportunities for our young people.

In just six months V has already:
? Allocated £13 million;
? Supported over 60 groups; and
? Created over 55,000 new volunteering opportunities.
This is on top of the 100,000 Olympic volunteers already signed up.

MENTORING
The government has also been promoting mentoring – another idea central to the “champions” philosophy and I see some of your employees have become mentors in local schools. In my own constituency of Stockport we have some excellent mentoring schemes. The mentoring of children and young people in Stockport is very strong, notably in schools in the most deprived areas where learning mentors work closely with other staff to support children and young people who experience difficulties with their learning.

The central element of mentoring is a long-tem, personal, one-to-one relationship, in which, over time, the experience and knowledge of one person helps another to learn and grow.

It gets results. In one programme for young people at risk in the United States, those befriended or mentored were 46 per cent less likely than others to use drugs and 27 per cent less likely to use alcohol. They were also less likely to get into fights or to play truant from school.

We are seeing similar results, on a smaller scale, in Britain. “Chance UK” a child mentoring scheme, found that three quarters of mothers interviewed saw positive changes in their child’s behaviour; four out of five regarded their child’s mentor as a good influence; and over two thirds reported benefits for their own relationship with their child

CONCLUSION

Today, Corporate Social Responsibility goes far beyond the old philanthropy of the past - donating money to good causes at the end of the financial year.

It is, instead, an all year round responsibility that companies accept for the environment around them, for the best working practices and for their engagement in their local communities.

They recognise that brand names depend not only on quality, price and uniqueness but on how they interact with their workforce, community and environment.

Here at Manchester Airport: whether it be offering volunteers to clean up local parks; encouraging people to become school governors; providing mentors or work experience, money and equipment - you are really helping to make a difference to the lives of many. Beveridge called it the driving power of social conscience.

Just as important, you are at the same time promoting a set of deeply held and important British values. Values which say we are part of a wider community and that we have a responsibility to leave the world a better place than we found it.

Thank you all for everything you are doing.