Purpose-driven recruitment agency, EllisKnight International recently completed a Challenge Box, a team-building challenge to help children escape violence set by its charity partner, the Buddy Bag Foundation.
Buddy Bag Foundation was created by Founder, Karen Williams OBE in response to the rising number of children who enter emergency care after fleeing violent situations at home. They seek to restore a sense of safety and security into a child’s life during a traumatic time and begin the first steps to recovery.
Providing these children with a few essential items, such as clothing, toys, stationery, books and toiletries help make the transition into emergency care a little easier.
There were two main aims for the Berkshire-based team to complete:
1. Identify 30 people to receive a shopping bag, then task those people to fill the bag with all the items needed to fill 30 Buddy Bags.
Part of the exercise was to shop for items suitable for children of different gender and ages, to provide a greater sense of personal touch to the project.
As EllisKnight are a small team, roping in a few volunteers was not going to cover all of the tasks and so they had everyone doing the shopping and everyone had multiple assignments.
2. Once the team had completed their individual tasks, they returned to the office to unpack their shopping and help pack the 30 rucksacks that were to be delivered.
It took four hours for the team to pack all of the rucksacks. Much of that time was spent double-checking everything to make sure no items were missed before the bags were sealed.
Once packed and labelled, the bags are ready to be delivered to a refuge centre within 20 miles of HQ in Pangbourne.
“The team at EllisKnight are extremely honoured to have completed The Buddy Bag Challenge. The work you guys do is incredible and makes a huge difference to children entering emergency care. To be able to be part of that has left us all with full hearts and the desire to make a difference in 2022! Thank you for the opportunity we look forward to doing it again in the Summer,” said Sam Whitby, Social Media Manager at EllisKnight.
How the BBF Challenge Box works
Supporting Local Refuges
The bags will be delivered to a local refuge in Berkshire within a week. Complications with the pandemic have hampered the effort but contact with the refuge is ongoing and they are excited to take the bags.
Around 48,000 children require emergency accommodation in the UK each year. These children are often fleeing a violent situation or sexual abuse, and have to leave home quickly, without the chance to collect basic items. Often children will arrive at emergency accommodation centres with only the clothes they are wearing.
Since its formation in 2015, The Buddy Bag Foundation has packed over 41,000 bags up as of the date of this article, and have supplied over 396 Women’s Refuges around the UK.
On a personal level, Sam added, “As soon as I read about what the Buddy Bag Foundation do and how they help children entering emergency accommodation, I knew I would like to support them.
“Having young children myself, I couldn’t even begin to imagine being in a situation where you have to flee your home with children and majority of the time only the clothes on your back and how scary this must be for a mother and the children.
“To be able to support a charity that brings a small glimmer of hope and comfort to a child who has been through a scary time just felt right.”
If your team would like to complete The Buddy Bag Challenge Box, you can find out more about it on our BBF Challenge Box page here.
