PROMOTING POSITIVE & SUSTAINABLE CHANGE

A sunny August day, a wonderful team, and a meaningful cause! Our LanguageLine volunteers Felix Ustorf, Rebecca Turner, Marzia Pinelli, David Elgar and Anna Paduchowska recently swapped their desks for garden tools at St. George Hospital. Together, they rolled up their sleeves to help refresh the hospital's green spaces, tidying up the garden behind the Education Centre as well as clearing all the weeds out the front, making a real difference to those using the building.

LanguageLine Gives Back forms part of our Social Value commitments, enabling LanguageLine employees to regularly participate in events that support the communities in which we operate.
 
 This week members of the team volunteered to spend a day at Aintree’s Fazakerley Bluebell Wood, helping to clear invasive species from the green space connected to Aintree University Hospital NHS Foundation Trust.

Aintree’s Fazakerley Bluebell Wood, which is one of the NHS Forest alliance sites, is a substantial, well-established woodland with over 1,000 trees and countless bluebells that transform the ground into a blue haze every April. The Centre for Sustainable Healthcare’s Nature Recovery Ranger is helping community volunteers look after the wood and encouraging people to explore this grand and peaceful natural retreat for the benefit of their physical health and mental wellbeing. 

Our Volunteers, Dave Panther , Madeline Friend and Anne Denny all enjoyed a rewarding (and tiring!) day, spent in this stunning outdoor setting, learning about sustainability in the woodland, supporting the organisation and spending some welcome time with colleagues. An amazing contribution, thank you and well done!

In December, three members of the LanguageLine team Rebecca Turner, Seema Parmar and Jessica Aguilera Maldonado spent the day at St George’s Hospital. Our volunteers were kept busy all day, wrapping Christmas Presents that were destined for the children staying on the paediatric ward.

It looks like the team could secretly be elves in their spare time – look how beautifully wrapped all those presents are!  

Here at LanguageLine Solutions, we don't really need an excuse to eat cake. However, we do love an extra reason to do so...especially when it involves raising money for St George's University Hospital!

In October, ten members of the team volunteered to contribute to our Charity Cake Bake. There were some spectacular offerings from our bakers from brownie to cheesecake, and even Cookie Monster cupcakes!
A fantastic effort from all our bakers and cake-eaters alike, getting together to support a very worthy cause. 

During the summer, members of the LanguageLine team volunteered to spend a rewarding (and tiring!) day working in the hospital gardens at St George's University Hospital.

The volunteers enjoyed a range of activities, including weeding and litter picking, harvesting vegetables from the Dementia Garden and picking lavender to go into the lavender bags for cancer patients.

It was a great day for a great cause, and our volunteers were even blessed with a sunny day! 

Nico completed the Battersea Run Through Half Marathon raising 250GBP in the process. "I ran for St. George's because of the life-saving work they do, and now more than ever we need to show our support for the NHS." 

To encourage breast screening appointments, we translated informative flyers to help spread awareness. These flyers wer translated into the top 10 requested languages in the hospital.

Our team enthusiastically participated in Deaf Awareness Training, enhancing our understanding of deaf culture and communication and fostering inclusivity and effective collaboration. Even learning some British Sign Language in the process.

LanguageLine colleagues took part in an interactive sensory awareness training session led by the incredible Susan Craney and Roger Hewitt, distinguished advocates and prominent ambassadors for the Deaf Community. 
 
The training was fascinating and engaging, and as you’ll see from the photo, a lot of fun! Susan and Roger shared with us the daily challenges faced by the Deaf Community, shedding light on the vast spectrum of deafness (did you know there are more than 26 different medical terms for deafness?), and enlightening us about the simple yet impactful ways to enhance communication, including the importance of lighting and ‘visual noise’. 
 
British Sign Language (BSL) took centre stage, with discussions on its history and grammatical structure. And that's not all – Susan and Roger even equipped us with BSL fingerspelling and some essential vocabulary, along with some pro tips to navigate without any communication hiccups!