At Onward, we are committed to making the most positive impact we can for the people and communities we serve. We want our investment to stretch beyond bricks and mortar. Our Director of Strategy, Rob Loughenbury, tells us more…
Our Corporate Plan ‘The Onward Difference’ sets out our commitment to make a positive difference by enabling people and communities to be their best. We will do this by providing homes that people love, in places they are proud of, and by working with our partners to do more. When it comes to making The Onward Difference, we know we can’t do this alone, but by working in partnership.
MatchMyProject has provided us with the tools to do just that by giving more back to our local community through our supply chain, helping all parties achieve meaningful social value outcomes. The platform has allowed us to adjust our approach to better measure and report on social value activity, ensuring we are delivering on our Corporate Plan commitments.
Since joining, our supply chain has supported 14 key projects, donated 259 hours of volunteer time, and pledged a further 259 hours in supporting local community groups. Onward’s largest repair contractor, Fortem Solutions, currently sits at the top of the platform’s leader board after giving 176 hours of their colleagues’ time and donating over £2,300 in materials to community groups that work with us.
Our Procurement Strategy aims to put ‘our customers and neighbourhoods at the heart of purchasing decisions’. MatchMyProject therefore plays a vital role in enabling our community groups to directly access the support they need from our supply chain to deliver things such as training and work experience to gain meaningful employment. We are now in the process of embedding MatchMyProject into our procurement plans for 2023-24, whereby bidders will be able to gain access to existing Social Value opportunities published by our community groups and Onward. We already have 38 communities registered and 37 suppliers. By continuing to encourage our supply chain to sign up to MatchMyProject, we are creating the network we have long needed to make our Social Value impact more sustainable.
We also have plans in place to use the platform to develop our Onward Academy programme, which is currently being piloted in partnership with The Learning Foundry in Merseyside.
The Onward Academy is a new network of organisations we are working to build that will collaborate and use their individual expertise to deliver employment and training for our customers. This network will enable us to facilitate apprenticeships, training and work experience opportunities for our customers that will lead them into good work, and help our own colleagues develop new skills and qualifications. Overall, the Academy will increase the Social Value we offer, help deliver our sustainability strategy and growth plans, and tackle some of the challenges and skills gaps the sector faces such as retrofit.
During our first pilot programme, we have been supporting a small group of 16–24-year-olds across Liverpool to gain valuable work experience as part of a Housing Traineeship. The students have already completed their CIH Level 2 qualification in housing delivered through the Learning Foundry and are now 8 weeks into gaining valuable work experience.
This pilot has been a great opportunity to explore how Onward can support our residents by providing them with the qualifications, skills, and experience to gain valuable employment. By working with some of our partners such as the Learning Foundry who have access to funding and training, this has helped Onward to deliver this at no extra cost. This is just 1 of 3 pilots Onward are currently engaged in under the Onward Academy, whereby we are looking to maximise our partnership working to deliver more employment and training opportunities for our customers and residents within our Neighbourhoods.
Once the pilots have been completed, we will move on to phase two of the programme and conduct a scoping exercise to identify and engage with new delivery partners, rolling out the Onward Academy to expand across our North West geography. MatchMyProject will help us to advertise these opportunities to our communities and connect our supply chain to support work experience.
If you’d like to stay up to date with the latest from MatchMyProject, please get in touch.
Email: hello@matchmyproject.org
Newsletter: Sign up to our newsletter
Website: https://matchmyproject.org
Telephone: 020 3488 6223
