Our CSR Programme - CluneTech Cares, is a fantastic representation of what we are - a team of truly caring individuals giving our best to support and add value, not only to our customers, but also to the communities in which we operate. CluneTech Cares is employee-led and has three key pillars: Wellness, Culture & Community, and Sustainability. It has been a busy quarter so make sure to check out some of our latest activities below.
With one of the key pillars of our CSR Programme CluneTech Cares being sustainability, we couldn’t forget all of our recent CSR events under the #CluneTechGoesGreen umbrella which we organized for our staff during the month of April.
Every year, in celebration of World Earth Day, CluneTech Goes Green for the month of April to raise awareness about the environment and learn more about what we can do for our planet across our day to day lives.
During the month of April #CluneTechGoesGreen:
• Shared daily tips and tricks with our colleagues on how we can change aspects of our lifestyles for the better of our planet.
• Donated €5 per employee that participated in a 5k run / walk for the month of April to Leave No Trace, Ireland’s only Outdoor Ethics Education Programme designed to promote and inspire responsible outdoor recreation.
• Debuted fresh ways to promote sustainability to our people like our virtual cooking demo with The Happy Pear discussing Sustainability, Food Waste and Cooking on a Budget, as well as a webinar teaching us how we can limit our digital use environmental footprint.
Thanks to our team's support and participation throughout the month, CluneTech donated over €100 to our dedicated sustainability charity, Leave No Trace Ireland which will go towards their work sustaining a healthy and vibrant outdoor environment for everyone. Well done to all of our amazing colleagues for their participation this month.
In honour of World MS Day, CluneTech Cares dedicated May's CSR spotlight to a number of incredibly deserving multiple sclerosis support charities. The charities supported included Moga Sam, MS Ireland and MS Society UK.
The MS – Moga sam organization in Bulgaria was founded by Bilyana Savova. At the age of 40, she was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. Bilyana started the organization in 2013 to support people with multiple sclerosis by helping them deal with their diagnosis both mentally and physically, as well as guiding them towards healthy lifestyle changes that can improve a range of MS symptoms.
The Multiple Sclerosis Society of Ireland (MS Ireland) is the only national organisation providing information, support, and advocacy services to the MS community. Their services include Regional Community Worker programmes for one-to-one support, physiotherapy, symptom management courses, newly diagnosed sessions, and the MS Information Line, one of the first services used in the time leading up to or following a diagnosis.
The Multiple Sclerosis Society is the UK's largest charity for people affected by multiple sclerosis. The organisation funds research, campaigns for social and political change and provides services that help people with multiple sclerosis and their families. It also compiles the only report of its kind on prevalence and living situations for people with MS across the UK
On the 30th of May, a walk / run was organised both remotely and in person for those who wanted to take part with their teammates in aid of this amazing cause. Following our team’s participation throughout the month of May, CluneTech donated €100 to each of our dedicated MS support charities. This donation will go towards the hugely important services made available to people affected by MS and their families. Thank you to everyone who got involved and for the support you’ve shown to our incredible charities during the month of May.
This June, we dedicated our CSR Spotlight to Pride Month in support and celebration of the LGBTQ+ community. All donations go towards several incredibly deserving LGBT+ support organisations and charities.
June is Pride Month, when the world’s LGBT communities come together and celebrate the freedom to be themselves. Pride gatherings are rooted in the arduous history of minority groups who have struggled for decades to overcome prejudice and be accepted for who they are.
The original organizers chose this month to pay homage to the Stonewall uprising in June 1969 in New York City, which helped spark the modern gay rights movement.
During the month of June, not only did our teams get involved in our monthly walk / run in support of the LGBTQ+ community, but they also took part in a number of fundraising Pride Month activities including CluneTech’s ‘Wear Your Rainbow Day’ and our annual Pride themed photography competition where we asked our teams what pride means to them.
Thanks to our team's participation throughout the month, CluneTech has made a monetary donation in support of our LGBTQ+ organisations and charities. Well done to all of our amazing colleagues for their participation this month.
For the third year in a row, we participated in Bulgaria’s biggest corporate run which took place in the Bulyard shipping factory in Varna, Bulgaria. On June 12th two CluneTech teams took part in Business Run Varna ranking #5 out of 76 teams on the day and #2 in the women's ranking. Not only was the Business Run a really great team building event, but it’s also a great way to give back to charity as 30% of the registration fees from the event was also donated to Karin Dom's new therapeutical center in Varna.
Set in the beautiful city of Varna, Karin Dom's new building opened its doors in September 2022, giving children with special needs from the Northeast of Bulgaria access to vital therapy that will help them to grow in strength and confidence. Well done to both teams on a fantastic result and for your time supporting this great cause.
Following our 2021 gardening therapy project, CluneTech and our Veliko Tarnovo team made another meaningful contribution to the local Daycare Center for children with disabilities. We donated a garden swing, allowing the young people in the center to spend more quality time outdoors which can help them reduce anxiety, increase their attention span, and improve their overall physical and mental wellbeing.
Veliko Tarnovo’s Center 'Rainbow' provides a set of services to promote children’s development, ensure comprehensive care for them during the day, meet their learning needs, provide motor and speech therapy, and provide quality time outdoors with their friends and family.
Following the ongoing support of our team in Bulgaria, CluneTech donated 21kgs of plastic caps for the latest edition of the 'I believe and help' initiative in Varna, which took place on 29th April.
'I believe and help' is a well-known Bulgarian initiative that is run biannually – once in the spring, and once in the autumn. It promotes plastic caps collection and recycling as a way to gather funds for buying vital medical equipment for children’s hospitals while also supporting the planet and recycling tons of plastic each year.
In addition to the plastic caps collection, this year the organizers promoted their first penny fundraiser campaign and a local fundraising bazaar, ending with an amazing record of 31 tons of plastic caps collected, equal to 24 800 BGN.
The latest goal of the 'I believe and help' organization is the collection of 500 000 BGN which will be used for buying:
• The first in Bulgaria mobile blood donation vehicle
• The second in the Southeast of Bulgaria Neonatal ambulance
• Lifesaving medical equipment for the pediatric surgical ward in St. Anna’s Hospital in Varna
Our career counselling program is our way to show how CluneTech cares about the youth and their future career development. For a fifth year in a row, CluneTech’s career counselling program took place in Varna High School of Commerce during the academic year 2022-2023.
In this year’s edition of our career counseling program, managers from various businesses from across our group met the young students training them for real life job interviews and developing specific skills which can help them get the best out of the career exploration, job search and job application processes.
At the end of the academic year, all participants had their professional LinkedIn headshot done by our in-house photographer and the best ones received a job recommendation letter from their mentor. Congratulations to all of our participants from Varna High School of Commerce and our Career Counseling Program mentors on this incredible initiative.
CluneTech Cares is led by our employees, for our employees. At the beginning of 2023, we opened our global CSR request form. We received exactly 50 requests from our teams with fundraising requests for charities and causes they hold dearest, in addition to the many amazing initiatives we already support.
This year in Bulgaria, we decided to follow our employee feedback and let our people decide the next initiative supported by CluneTech Cares.
Following our team’s feedback, the 'I Want a Baby' organization was chosen as our next beneficiary. The 'I Want a Baby' organization coordinates reproduction, fertility treatment and psychological support programs for childless couples.
Following her nomination, Iglika Raeva from our Veliko Tarnovo office shared:
“The reason I want to support 'I Want a Baby' is because it is a cause very close to my heart. The volunteers there give their time and endless effort to support the families that are listed in the program. They support them not only financially, but also mentally, and emotionally and become their second family. All the parents of the babies born with the help of the foundation are also volunteers and they give back time and effort invested by others previously for them. I see great value in their cause, to have more babies, increased population, happiness for people that have wanted this for years.”
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Introduced in 2021, our CSR Volunteer Day empowers each employee to give back to the charities and causes closest to them. Since the inception of our Volunteer Day, over 70 CluneTech employees have contributed to causes which they find meaningful, and this number keeps growing.
“A huge thank you from Griffeen parkrun for the very generous donation from CluneTech and the GPTW team. The core team used the donation to purchase a microphone and speaker, which makes the important run and safety briefings audible!”
– Marie Collins, Immedis.
Just a week before Easter, over ten CluneTech volunteers helped with the renovation of the Social Teahouse in Varna. Their immense support came in addition to a small financial donation that CluneTech made to give a push to the organization’s renovation project.
The Social Teahouse is a tea and coffee shop, a venue for many events and a favorite place for the residents and the guests of the city of Varna. Most importantly, it is a social enterprise set up to support young people from difficult backgrounds and help them gain employment by giving them a chance to start their first job in the organization.
In May 2023, Chris Henry from our Veliko Tarnovo office spent his Volunteer Day working on the restoration of one of Bulgaria’s most ancient churches in the Kereka village near Dryanovo, Bulgaria called “Mary’s Holy Annunciation”. A volunteering group led by Hristo Totsev worked on restoring the retaining wall of the nearly 200-year-old building, which was also used as a school for the children of the residents of the village.
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