Staff from Barclays volunteered to take part in a number of community-based projects throughout the month of July.

These include work for the Manx Wildlife Trust at Clybane, Ramsey, work on the garden at Hospice and a two-day beach clean.

Staff are also organising a collection to raise money for Housing Matters and Isle of Man Foodbank.

Claire Bush, from Barclays’ business management team, organises the volunteer projects. She said: ’We like to do things throughout the whole of July as it gets colleagues out and about, it’s good for team building and it helps the community as well.’

In all nearly 50 staff have volunteered to take part in the various projects.

Eight of them were at the Education Support Centre (ESC) in Douglas last week, working to enhance the garden there.

The idea was suggested to Claire by another Barclays staff member, Katie O’Hea, whose son Daniel attends the ESC.

Katie helped Claire to organise the event with help and donations from a number of local companies. Watson’s Nurseries visited a few weeks before the event to advise on landscaping, raising beds and planting and they donated plants including climbers to disguise an unsightly fence. Robinsons gave dozens of bedding plants and compost, whilst B&Q contributed compost, a hose, seeds and a picnic bench.

Haldane Fisher gave the wood for the raised beds and Douglas Parks Division donated six tons of topsoil to fill them. Buchanan and Pitts sent along a member of staff to help, along with all the paint required to make the garden look cheeful for the children, with hopscotch painted on the tarmac and flowers on the wooden sides of the raised beds.

Jacs Stores donated garden tools and art materials and a £50 voucher for anything else that might been needed. Katie said that this would be spent on pans to cook the potatoes and other vegetables they are hoping to grow in the ’garden to plate’ area.

There was even a £40 voucher from Shoprite to purchase food for lunch and all the volunteers took a break to sit down to lasagne cooked in the ESC’s kitchen.

The ESC works with around 50 children from reception age to 11 years who are struggling in mainstream schooling because they have been affected by social, emotional and behavioural issues. Each child has a programme tailored to their individual needs and will be offered an appropriate number of sessions each week at the centre with the ultimate aim of helping them to reintegrate fully in school.