Hilton employees pay back

Hilton global month of service helps London homeless, Italy immigrants and makes soap in Dubai

Global Month of Service is Hilton Worldwide’s largest annual community service initiative and mobilises hundreds of thousands of team members from every region to engage in numerous volunteer events and activities happening around the world.

Volunteers offer their time to support a wide range of projects including conserving natural resources, mentoring and training young people, creating amenity care packages for communities in need, collecting surplus food and distributing to underserved communities and aiding local communities devastated by disaster.

Since its inaugural celebration in 2012, Hilton volunteers have provided support to more than 6,700 projects worldwide contributing more than 300,000 hours of community service. Last year in just one week, Hilton hosted more than 3,500 projects in 86 countries, volunteering more than 150,000 hours. The company aims to complete 3,750 projects across its global footprint.

This year in London… more than 55 volunteers from various DoubleTree by Hilton hotels in London are working with the Beyond Food Foundation (BFF) and other organisations to support people who are at risk of, or have experienced, homelessness to gain helpful support and meaningful skills.

In 2014 the government estimated around 2,744 people sleep rough on any one night across England . This training and capacity building initiative by DoubleTree by Hilton will support the work of organisations supporting over 300 homeless and at risk Londoners each week, including BFF, Muswell Hill Soup Kitchen, Spitalfields Crypt Trust, St. John Winter Night Shelter and Hands On.

In preparation for busy periods as the weather gets colder, the activities saw DoubleTree by Hilton team members share their skills to help build the capacity of homeless shelter teams to support even more of London’s homeless population in the months and years to come.

The pro-bono sessions ranged from insight on operational processes such as health and safety, through to tips on cooking nutritious meals at scale on a budget. The activity also saw 11 DoubleTree by Hilton properties in and around London work together to donate 1,300 wash bags with toiletries, over 100 towels, half a dozen bags of clothes, and a vast amount of bedding to local homeless shelter partners.

The event was inspired by an ongoing partnership between DoubleTree by Hilton – Tower of London and BFF, which has seen the hotel offer a number of homeless people relevant skills and insight to help them into a career in hospitality over the last 18 months. This has included behind the scenes hotel tours and interview opportunities and masterclasses with the hotel chefs, where they share their expertise, details of their own career journeys and top tips for succeeding in the industry.

In Milan more than 50 volunteers from the company built on the hotel’s long term partnerships with Farsi Prossimo and Equoevento by undertaking a range of culinary activities to strengthen the community in which it operates.

Farsi Prossimo is a social cooperative that supports migrants by helping them find accommodation, training, and employment. Hilton Milan has collaborated with the organization for three years, providing work experience, business skills coaching, and cookery training sessions. The hotel has also donated surplus equipment following its recent refurbishment.

To celebrate the partnership, 20 women from Farsi Prossimo’s ‘M’ama Food’ programme were invited to share recipes from their many countries of origin with team members and Hilton Worldwide executives, culminating in a celebratory banquet for  team members at the hotel. The dishes, which focused on the innovative use of sustainable, seasonal ingredients, were compiled into a recipe book, capturing the diverse culinary influences of the participants.

Leftover food was then given to local food banks, facilitated by Hilton Milan’s partnership with Equoevento, a local delivery partner of Banco Alimentare, the Italian national food bank. Hilton Worldwide hotels throughout Italy have been working with Banco Alimentare to enable these donations for a couple of years.

And in Dubai…

As part of the company’s commitment to repurposing used goods for community needs, more than 100 Hilton Worldwide Team Members from across the company’s seven hotels in Dubai joined children from Al Garhoud National Charity School to receive training on soap recycling, producing a remarkable 200 bars of soap. The event contributes to ongoing efforts led by Hilton Worldwide’s UAE hotels, which have partnered with Diversey to create more than 27,500 new bars of soap since June 2014.

Valere Tjolle

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