Our business in Hong Kong, Crown Motors, sponsored the Arsenal Soccer School for children aged from five to 12. Inspired by Toyota’s ‘Live Young’ campaign, the initiative helped to encourage over 100 young people to take up the sport, get fit and develop a positive attitude and sense of teamwork. Matches have been held in Hong Kong between teams and the children have established great friendships.

In April of 2009, a young Service Advisor, Jerome, in the Inchcape Australia team was involved in a serious motor bike accident, leaving him paralysed from the waist down and confined to a wheelchair. Within weeks, colleagues rallied together and raised over AUD$28,500 to help him and his family with medical costs and costs of modifying their home. Throughout his recovery, Inchcape Australia kept in touch with Jerome and, in late 2010, he was able to go back to work in a technical customer relations role, providing expert advice. Jerome has continued to work for the brand he loves and is dedicated to delivering outstanding customer service. Inchcape Australia has been fortunate enough to retain this talented and dedicated member of staff, with a long and bright career ahead of him.

Sister Florentine, who has been living in Burkina Faso for the past 20 years, works tirelessly to help local communities with education and health issues. She had a 17 year old Land Cruiser in which she travelled at least 500,000 miles, and was in desperate need of a new vehicle. Toyota Belgium was able to offer her a new Toyota Hilux, which was shipped to Burkina Faso in a container – also filled with generous donations of children’s clothes from our staff in Belgium. These were distributed to local communities and Sister Florentine put her old Land Cruiser to rest and is now driving from village to village with her new Toyota Hilux.

This fantastic charity takes in extremely disadvantaged children from Addis Ababa and beyond, provides shelter, food, education, medical care and therapy for children and their parents. Mother and Child Rehabilitation Centre (MCRC) aims to help them recover from past traumas and equip them through employment and professional training with the means to be independent and successful in the future.

Over 2010, staff around the world donated money, clothes and toys, took part in a number of fundraising events and, in November 2010, Inchcape agreed to fund the centre’s monthly rental costs securing their new premises. All of these ongoing contributions help ensure the programme continues to provide support and hope to these children and their mothers. www.mcrc-addisababa.org

Inchcape Singapore (Borneo Motors & Champion Motors) is collaborating with the SouthWest Community Development Council (CDC) to plant 1,000 native plants and trees over a three year period. The project, Tree of Life, aims to create an environment and ecosystem which attracts more than 200 local species of birds and butterflies, and contribute to an eventual reduction of 22,000kg of CO₂ annually.

The Tree of Life project brings together staff of Inchcape Singapore and residents of the community in a joint effort to create a vibrant, colourful and sustainable landscape.

During 2010, Inchcape Fleet Solutions (IFS) signed up as a corporate donor to road safety charity Brake, which promotes road safety and provides support to families affected by serious road accidents.

IFS staff have raised a total of £12,000 through various initiatives including the Yorkshire Three Peaks Challenge. As a result of these donations, IFS has gained access to services like Brake’s Fleet Safety Forum, which provides road safety resources to fleet managers. Thanks to this burgeoning relationship, the business is able to further enforce its road safety awareness message to clients and staff alike, raising donations in the process.

Our Toyota Hellas Greece colleagues participated in the fourth annual Beach Cleaning event during June 2010, Toyota’s Green Month. In association with Environmental NGO the Mediterranean SOS Network and the Municipality of Marathonas, staff volunteered for a day and cleaned Schinias beach. The event really cultivated the spirit of social responsibility and volunteerism among our staff.

In September 2010, Nigel Woodman and James Tayler cycled 400 miles from Sunderland to Southampton over six days to raise funds for Inchcape plc’s Charity of the Year Havens Hospices. The team raised a total of £10,600 that went to supporting the invaluable support Havens provides for sick adults, children and their families. For more information on the charity see www.havenshospices.org.uk

For the fifth year, Inchcape took part in events in support of Toyota’s Green Month.

The first activity was an Eco-Driving seminar for staff to help reduce fuel consumption and CO₂emissions.

The second activity involved 50 Inchcape volunteers successfully cleaning a beach in Aspropyrgos in cooperation with the Mediterranean SOS Network and Aspropyrgos Municipality.

In 2009, Inchcape Australia launched ‘Inchcape in the Community’, an employee volunteering programme where staff receive an extra day of paid leave per year to dedicate to a community project.

‘Inchcape in the Community’ is an opportunity for employees to get involved and ‘give back’ to the community through engaging in an activity for any of the following charities: The Smith Family Hospice, The Salvation Army, Conservation Volunteers or Cancer Council Australia.

Our UK vehicle leasing and management company was the only one in its sector to win this in 2009.

The award recognised a newly launched ISO 14001 accredited environmental management system that supports environmental management for clients.

This includes a number of innovative online tools to help customers reduce their carbon footprint including: a CO₂ tracking tool that helps select lower impact and lower cost vehicles, enhanced vehicle comparison tools with vehicle-specific environmental impact tagging integrated within an online 
quote system.

On 28^th March, 4,000 towns in 88 countries switched off the lights as part of the global Earth Hour campaign organised by World Wildlife Fund (WWF).

Inchcape’s business in Bulgaria, Toyota Balkans, and its dealer network helped promote the campaign to staff and customers and took part by switching off electricity to their showrooms during Earth Hour.

Our business was given a special recognition award for being the WWF’s best business partner for this project.

Inchcape supports the Mother and Child Rehabilitation Centre (MCRC) in Ethiopia. Taking in extremely disadvantaged children from Addis Ababa and beyond, the centre provides shelter, food, education, medical care and therapy for children and their parents.