From School to Professional: Building a Brighter Future
Founded in 1953, we are proud to mark our 70th anniversary year by celebrating the positive impact Ryder has made on the communities in which we work
70 Years of Ryder
Founded in 1953, we are proud to mark our 70th anniversary year by celebrating the positive impact Ryder has made on the communities in which we work
We’re proud to share that across our teams and locations, our collective fundraising and volunteering efforts have raised a total of £177,849 in just six months.
Over the past seventy years, our commitment to community impact has been a cornerstone to our culture – it fuels our practice, people, and projects. Every team across Ryder contributes to our giving back endeavours, unique to causes important to them as individuals and teams.
Our goal is simple, to improve the quality of the world around us and, in doing so, improve peoples lives. Rooted in our heritage, collaboration has taken various forms over the years; from entrepreneurial founders integrating architects and engineers in a single practice to today’s supply chain management, one thing is for certain, community is at the core.
During Blueprint in April 2023, we made a pledge to raise seventy thousand pounds in just six months. Month three arrived and we had achieved this target, so we increased that to £140,000.
Teams took full creative control of their fundraising and volunteering activities, choosing which charities to support and how to do so. The result was a refreshing array of creative, individual, and purposeful events.
We’ve engaged with educators, from primary and secondary schools to universities, across our locations to deliver, workshops, guided site visits, lectures, and tutorials.
As advocators of bringing built environment education into young people’s school careers, Ronnie Graham’s team sponsored the Little Inventors programme in the north east of England. The sponsorship saw the idea of our own Little Inventor, nine year old Jack from South Tyneside, brought to life by Ronnie’s team.
Other endeavours include gifting the children’s mental health Melva programme to primary schools, engaging in the award winning Class of Your Own’s Design Engineer Construct! programme, and continuing to expand PlanBEE higher apprenticeships and Building My Skills programme.
Outside the classroom, we’ve invested time in community gardens, helped at soup kitchens, collected food bank donations, enjoyed inter team sporting challenges, endless quizzing, and litter picking on paddleboards.
The Ryder2Ryder virtual cycle relay brought our fundraising to a thrilling close with over nine hundred and twenty six kilometres covered in five consecutive days.
Whether in the past six months or 70 years, thank you to everyone who has contributed to and continues to support our community work. We’re proud to see our people improving the quality of the world we live within, leaving it, and our practice, in a better place for future generations.
At the culmination of our 70th anniversary it’s humbling to look back with pride at the amazing efforts our teams have contributed to exceeding our community impact target. I thank them all, and all our friends who have supported us.
It’s a testament to the ethos of our people that we place giving back at the heart of our 70th anniversary celebrations. It’s fantastic to see that community continues to be a fundamental part of our business activities and is evolving with our people and projects.
Learn more in the 70 Years of Ryder series.
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