29 Jacobs colleagues from the Edinburgh, Glasgow and London office will be participating in a race across the Edinburgh Marathon Festival (EMF) to raise money for Social Bite (27th - 28th of May 2023). We have colleagues running the full marathon, half marathon, 10k and the Hairy Haggis Relay. 

Participating Jacobs Colleagues

Many thanks to the colleagues who have signed up to run a race on the EMF weekend to fundraise money for Social Bite: 

Thibault Audic, Abbie Bell, Patrick Meere, Stuart Turnbull, Hugh McMichael, Graham Walker, Amy Hendry, Natalie McWilliams, Rachel Schulberg, Peter McCann, Matthew Stewart, Eva Bonaccorsi, Phil Hamilton, Anna Maouad, Neil Shepherd, Wenna Shimmield, Daniel Saunders, Colin Wylie, Natasha Ferguson, Scott Brown, Victoria Campbell, Douglas Dyche, Isobelle Paterson, Bryan Mackie, Chris Reid, James Wilkes, Cameron Patterson, Leanne McGregor and John Ballantyne.

Target

As a group, we have a collective fundraising target of £8,000. This amount will be extremely impactful for Social Bite, helping their mission of ending homelessness by providing food, jobs and homes. More info on Social Bite is provided in the following headers.

This fundraising page is used for external donations.

There is an internal page set up for Jacobs colleagues. The amount from both pages will be added together to give our total.

Social Bite x Jacobs

Jacobs has been supporting Social Bite for a number of years. In 2019, more than 100 Jacobs employees from cities including Edinburgh, London, Cardiff, Manchester, Leeds and Dublin, participated in the charity’s ‘World’s Big Sleep Out’ campaign. Furthermore, Jacobs has secured funding for Social Bite’s Covid-19 appeal and fundraised for its yearly Christmas campaign, The Festival of Kindness. In 2021 and 2022, teams from Jacobs took part in Social Bite’s charity cycle ride, ‘Break the Cycle with Sir Chris Hoy’. This saw our colleagues cycling from Glasgow to Edinburgh accompanied by Sir Chris, raising over £26,000!

About Social Bite

Social Bite is a charity and social enterprise on a mission to end homelessness. We provide life-changing jobs, innovative housing models and UK-wide free food programmes with wrap-around support to help some of the most vulnerable people in our society. Jacobs participation in the EMF in aid of Social Bite will help those experiencing homelessness in a number of ways:

Food

We believe food is not only a basic human right, but an incredible tool to build positive relationships with people that can lead to ongoing support and pathways out of homelessness including employment. We operate five social enterprise coffee shops in four cities – Aberdeen, Glasgow, Edinburgh, and London. These shops offer free food to people experiencing homelessness, but also job opportunities. We operate a food distribution network, working with over 100 charity partners and community groups UK-wide to fund and distribute emergency food packages and essential items to those most in need.

Jobs

Launched in October 2021, our Jobs First programme currently operates in Scotland and London. What sets it apart from other employability initiatives is that we provide individuals with not just the skills and training, but also the opportunities and placements to secure and sustain real jobs. We seek out and partner with mainstream employers to inspire and equip them to provide employment to those who’ve experienced homelessness. Crucially, we provide continued wrap-around trauma-informed support for every placement, helping break down barriers and build sustainable relationships.

Homes

Our Social Bite Village projects provide a ground-breaking solution to helping people break the cycle of homelessness and are an alternative to the systemic reliance on unsupported shared temporary accommodation, which is costly and ineffective with poor social outcomes. A Social Bite Village offers a stable, dignified and caring place to live for 12-18 months, providing people with extensive support in a community environment.

Our Social Bite Village in Edinburgh launched in 2018 – since then, it’s helped over 60 people move on from the Village and sustain their own long-term tenancies. Excitingly, we’re in the process of replicating this successful model in other cities across the UK, starting with Glasgow and Dundee. The level of fundraising achieved by Jacobs for the ‘Break the Cycle’ campaigns has led to the sponsorship a new home at the soon to be built Glasgow Village – with the opportunity for Jacobs to name the home! More on this soon…

If anyone has any questions about the charity and its work, please email Partnerships@social-bite.co.uk.