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CP Scott was very clear that one of the fundamental principles of theGuardian was that it should have a sense of duty to the community. Formost of its life, the Guardian belonged to Manchester and this intenserelationship was summed up by Scott at the paper’s centenary dinner in1921: “The paper which has grown up in a great community, nourished byits resources, reflecting in a thousand ways its spirit and its interests, in areal way belongs to it.”

So it was a real wrench when the decision came in the early 1960s tomove to London in order to prevent the paper withering into provincialinsignificance. Peter Preston, who was Guardian editor from 1975 to 1995,observes that it took 30 years for the paper to find “its London place as atrue national and developed a team which could dig in and fight with therest”.

It took around the same time for GNL to realise that, apart from itspresence on the national stage, it could also make an impact in its newcommunity of Clerkenwell and Islington. Four years ago GNL set up itsown community scheme (see below for details) with the aim of ensuringthat we did not just encourage others to improve their communities, butalso did it ourselves.

The heart of the scheme is based around schools close to ourFarringdon headquarters. This is for obvious reasons. There are fewbusinesses that play such an important role in education as GNL. Ourweekly Guardian education supplement is an invaluable resource to itsreadership of 1.8 million teachers, educational experts, parents andstudents. Alongside this, we also run a hugely successful educationwebsite, EducationGuardian.co.uk, as well the award-winning onlinecurriculum resource Learn.co.uk.

GNL is also conscious of the role it can play in the education sector as awhole. For example, GNL co-founded and invested more than £250,000in the charity Tools for Schools, which sources high quality computersfrom industry and then refurbishes and upgrades them before installingthem in primary and secondary schools.

Jan Tallis, the chief executive of Tools for Schools, says: “The Guardian'sbacking of Tools for Schools has enabled a vision to become a reality. Thestart-up funding of £200,000 plus a further payment of £50,000 providedthe bedrock finance to the organisation allowing it to grow into thesuccess it is today. Drawing on the expertise of other Guardian personnel,particularly managing director Carolyn McCall and Guardian editor AlanRusbridger as trustees, has benefited Tools for Schools immensely. Theirideas, support and insight into business practice have been key to theorganisation's achievements.”

On a national scale we support several major schemes that seek tointegrate journalism with educational opportunities. The Scott Trust hasspent £4m on a state-of-the-art archive and education centre opposite ourFarringdon Road headquarters. In the 10 months to April 2003, the twofull-time education officers held 207 educational sessions at theNewsroom involving 5,016 individuals. Activities included schoolroomworkshops, higher education visits from the UK, Europe and the US,family days, teacher training and adult learning. All educational sessionsare free of charge.

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Bessie Shoreland helping out with the globalgarden project at Elizabeth Garrett Andersonschool.

Four years ago GNL setup its own communityscheme with the aim of ensuring that we did not just encourage others to improve their communities, but also did it ourselves

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Schools that came from as far away as Devon and Lancashire haveaccess to the very latest in technology, including a specially devisedpublishing system, interactive whiteboard, digital cameras, and scannersto help students engage and interact with the news and archives to createtheir own front page.

The Newsroom has been so successful that it is now fully bookedmonths in advance with an extended waiting list, and several newinitiatives are planned for the next year.

Alongside this, GNL also donates £20,000 annually to the NewspaperEducation Trust based at West ferry printsite where the Guardian andObserver are printed. The Trust works with school groups on a variety ofjournalism-based projects.

The Scott Trust separately spends £56,000 a year supporting thedevelopment of talented journalists in this country by providingbursaries for six aspiring writers to study journalism at City University,London or Sheffield University.

GNL also supports Children’s Express, which enables disadvantagedteenagers to produce their own news articles about issues affecting theirage group, which can then be sold to local and national print and web-based media organisations.

One of the subsidiary interests of the Scott Trust is in “promoting thecauses of freedom in the press and liberal journalism, both in Britain andelsewhere”. This function is fulfilled by its charitable wing, the GuardianFoundation, which supports the creation of successful and editoriallyindependent newspapers in the Guardian tradition, both in easternEurope and more recently in Africa. The foundation brings togetherjournalists at a relatively senior level to share experiences andperspectives. That means seminars and work placements — at home andabroad — but it also increasingly entails the provision of expertise incommercial as well as editorial newspaper production. The foundationalso has a grant-making capacity for use in the training area and thebroader areas of press freedom.

There have been numerous activities over the past year includinghelping set up the first Bulgarian national investigative journalism prizes,which enabled the two winners to come to Britain and spend timeworking on the Guardian, Observer and Manchester Evening News.

Separately, Miro Petek, a financial journalist from the Slovenian paperVecer, who was beaten unconscious by thugs after the publication of anumber of investigations into money laundering and controversialprivatisations, was invited to spend time working in the Guardian’s cityoffice.

The former Guardian editor Peter Preston travelled across easternEurope and Africa, delivering lectures and chairing seminars on topicssuch as political reporting and press freedoms, and the foundation spreadits wings by working in Macedonia for the first time.

GNL also has an annual Christmas appeal, which encourages readers tocontribute to worthwhile causes. The Guardian, Observer, GuardianUnlimited and Guardian Weekly all team up to raise awareness of some ofthe most pressing issues both at home and abroad. In 2001’s appeal, weraised £618,000 for Aids orphans in Africa and asylum seekers in this

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Members of Children’s Express news teamworking on their website

Steve Bell with an admirer at the Big Draw event in The Newsroom

The Newsroom has beenso successful that it isnow fully bookedmonths in advance withan extended waiting list

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country, and last year we collected a record-breaking £840,000 forWaterAid as well as Fairbridge, a UK charity that works with 13 to 25-year-olds in many of the UK’s most deprived inner cities.

Apart from the cash and the heightened profile the charities receivefrom five weeks of editorial coverage across all publications, GNL alsosupports the charities in more practical ways. For example we have overthe past two years designed a magazine for each of the charities, collatingall the appeal articles that were carried in the papers. The charities usethese to raise further funds and to increase awareness of the issues theyare dealing with. With regard to WaterAid, we also hosted a celebrityauction event at the Newsroom. At the same venue we organised a mediatraining day for Fairbridge’s staff from around the country.

Apart from supporting many worthwhile causes, GNL also supportsmembers of staff in raising money for their own favoured charities. Apartfrom match-funding employees' own fundraising activities, we offer afinancial incentive to support our Give As You Earn scheme. As a result,22% of the workforce currently donate through payroll. With GNL’smatch-funding, this means that in past year more than 150 differentcharities received £44,000.

COMMUNITY SCHEMEThe local community scheme seeks to mirror our publications’ innovativeand fresh approach, a quality recognised in 2001 by winning a prestigiousDragon Award for corporate social responsibility from the Corporation ofLondon.

There are many strands to GNL’s community work but we do have acore philosophy. We are keen to:

• form long-term sustainable partnerships;• link cash donations to volunteering projects;• integrate commitment, passion and a sense of fun with realistic,achievable targets and rigorous project management; • develop equal partnerships, in which everyone feels they have a partto play and everyone takes responsibility for success;• use our core funding to lever financial support and resources fromelsewhere.We have developed partnerships with three local schools — in the

primary, secondary and special needs sectors. In each school we provide amix of financial, volunteer and skills support. Around 10% of the 1,365staff have been involved in the past year on one of the many volunteeringinitiatives at the schools involved (see appendix 6 for more details).

The flagship scheme is Elizabeth Garrett Anderson girls’ secondaryschool. The highlights of the last year have been the creation of a £35,000global garden at the concrete-dominated site and the completion of a hi-tech £1.9m language and learning centre. Not only did the companyprovide the school with the initial £50,000 seedcorn funding but a seniorjournalist chaired the strategy group in charge of building the centre.GNL also secured support from the advertising company Saatchi &Saatchi to brand the new centre.

The hi-tech language complex, called Platform One will not only

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Last year we collected a record-breaking£840,000 for our Christmas appeal charitiesWaterAid and Fairbridge

Our innovative and freshapproach was recognised in 2001 when we won a prestigious DragonAward for corporatesocial responsibility from the Corporation of London

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support the aims of the school but also seeks to integrate these with theneeds of the local community. Headteacher Jill Coughlan said: “We hopethat Platform One will become a flagship for secondary schooling inIslington and that the new aspirational building will be a tangible symbolof change in Islington. All this was made possible by your initial £50,000.This project models an innovative approach to transform a community’sperception and use of a school. We want to work within the vision of localregeneration to explore innovative ways for secondary schools to reinventthemselves for schooling and community education in the 21st century.”

GNL staff also work with EGA on many other activities, such as one-to-one mentoring and literacy support. The year 10 pupils who are selected bythe school as candidates for mentoring have a C/D borderline academicrecord and benefit from the programme, which aims to improve attitudesto work, self-esteem and personal organisation. Many of the 120 year 7 girlswho have attended the reading sessions speak English as an additionallanguage and the small group work made possible by the volunteers helpsnot only with reading and comprehension skills, but with students’confidence levels.

We worked with the Guardian’s gardening correspondent, Ann-MariePowell, to redevelop a large empty paved area within EGA’s schoolgrounds into an innovative global garden. We held a competition amongpupils and then Ann-Marie incorporated their designs into the final plan.Through our initial funding we have leveraged financial help from theKing’s Cross Partnership as well as from companies such as JCB, B&Q andBulldog tools.

GNL has donated nearly 40 computers to the school, supported itsdebating society, donated hundreds of books and lectured students aspart of their business studies.

Bob Phillis, chief executive of our parent group GMG, hosted a fact-finding trip last autumn to the school by senior executives from a numberof firms such as Marks & Spencer and Nike at the request of Business inthe Community. The visit inspired some of the executives to set up theirown community schemes or to develop their existing initiatives further.

GNL also supports Hugh Myddleton primary school and RichardCloudesley special needs school in the Barbican by providing volunteersand resources for ongoing and one-off projects. During the year weformed a partnership with City University to fulfil an ambition of thepupils at Richard Cloudesley to design and build a robot to compete in theBBC’s Technogames series.

Anne Corbett, the headteacher of Richard Cloudesley, says: “We haveestablished a warm and extremely useful relationship with the Guardian.The volunteers have helped with reading, lunchtime clubs, music lessons,riding lessons, individual mentoring, work on the internet, photographs,a super school brochure, and even the occasional odd job around theschool. The link is positive, real without patronage, and great fun”.

The community scheme has two full-time staff. Part of their role is tohelp match the requirements of our education partners with the vastarray of in-house skills among our employees, whether it be from thecreative writing and design side to the many commercial operations suchas advertising and conferences and events.

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“The link is positive, realwithout patronage andgreat fun”Anne Corbett, head of Richard Cloudesley special school

Leveraged funding created the Global Garden atElizabeth Garrett Anderson school

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Because experience shows employees nearly always rise to thechallenge, regardless of their workload, we closely manage theserelationships to ensure volunteers have the time to fulfil their offers ofhelp. We also have a policy to allow employees to use up to eight hours amonth of work time volunteering, subject, to the agreement of theirheads of department.

To ensure that the school partnership schemes are well run and that theoutputs are as effective as possible, we have developed a closerelationship with Community Service Volunteers, Britain’s largestvolunteer organisation.

One of the key criteria that must be met before we go ahead with anynew scheme is that the project is sustainable over the long term. Thisrequires our partners’ commitments to effectively managing their end ofany project. This mutual enthusiasm enables projects to grow naturallyand with ease. CSV helps in this process by independently monitoring theschemes. There are formal quarterly follow-ups with each new volunteer,and school contacts. We also hold yearly appraisals of each schemebetween all parties to review outputs and to see where we can makeimprovements. We also organise informal social events betweenvolunteers and our community partners to enhance relationships. CSValso trains all our volunteers.

CSV’s director, Margaret Burden, says: “The Guardian has alwaysproved to be innovative in its approach to projects in making sure thatthere is a wide variety of choice of involvement that it provides foremployees, and ensuring that there is senior management buy-in andsupport. The Guardian employees have shown great commitment to theirvolunteering, with most continuing to volunteer for a second year. Thiscommitment is a reflection on the strong framework of each project, thesupport structures that are in place, and recognition by the employeesthat their contribution to the learning process is fun and rewarding. Thepartnership between CSV and the Guardian is proof that a companywhich is committed to innovative community involvement can reallymake a difference. The Guardian is professional in approach, flexible indelivery, and genuine in its support of employee volunteer projects.”

Another of our criteria is that we pilot all our schemes to ensure thatwe and our partners can fulfil our obligations and, perhaps moreimportantly, that the schemes are meeting their objectives. On thequalitative side, we also believe that the right chemistry needs to be inplace to build positive relationships, and that trust takes time to build.For example, at Richard Cloudesley we started with a reading scheme andonly when that was a proven success did we develop more innovativeplacements to match the more diverse needs of the school, such as inmusic and art.

The community scheme has also ventured into new territory over thepast year, offering coaching to school and charity executives, as well asadvising other companies in how to set up their own initiatives.

The community scheme is not only seen by employees to activelysupport GNL’s values but also makes their individual lives richer. It has apowerful knock-on effect in enriching our products. A deeper and moreintimate knowledge of what is going on in communities means that the

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A student from Richard Cloudesley school with hisfinished robot for the BBC’s Technogamesprogramme

“The Guardian is professional in approach,flexible in delivery, andgenuine in its support of employee volunteer projects”Margaret Burden, director of Community Service Volunteers

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Guardian and Observer newspapers, as well as our websites, benefit frombetter informed and more empathetic journalists.

Effective partnerships only work when both sides benefit. When theeducation editor was planning the redesign of our weekly supplement, allthe education staff went to EGA school to spend lunch with a number ofteachers to see what they really wanted in the section. This helped createa much more focused and informed product.

The development of our archive and education centre includedconsultancy support from Richard Cloudesely on disability access and useof specialist technology. Both our partner schools were also involved inthe piloting phase of the centre.

The development of technical links with Children’s Express alsoresulted in our publications using more of the editorial content thecharity produces.

Our schemes also help individual members of staff develop new skillswhich they can then use to full effect in their work lives. This can rangefrom better assertiveness and patience to motivational techniques andconflict resolution. Not only can employees grasp a real sense of theGuardian’s ethic in practice, but the business also naturally benefits in amore commercial sense by showing advertisers, particularly in the publicand voluntary sectors, that we are living up to our principles. But there isno better way of showing the difference our scheme makes to thecompany and its staff than to hear from the volunteers first hand.

Hannah Pool, a commissioning editor on Weekend Guardian and anEGA mentor, said: “From a selfish point of view, it's been bags of fun,fulfilling and challenging. It's an amazing feeling to think you might besomeone who as a young adult, in say 10 years’ time, looks back and says,‘yes, they really made a difference, they made me think about newopportunities I didn't think were open to the likes of me’. The project hasgiven me a much better idea on how we can introduce the Guardian toyounger readers, and to readers outside our normal constituency. Gettingthese kids interested in the paper is an effort but very rewarding. You feellike you've let them in on a secret which plenty of others (ie nice middleclass kids) know about already and hopefully one day that will be of use tothem — it's the old adage about knowledge being power.

“I can't stress enough what a wonderful scheme I think this is. It is alltoo easy to put money in a charity box or buy the Big Issue, but that'shardly a commitment and I have really benefited from feeling committedto something — from taking time out of the rat-race and doing somethingthat isn't about work, news or money and I'm sure in turn that has had abeneficial effect on my day to day performance. I went to a school not atall dissimilar to EGA and I know that if I'd had a mentor at the age of 14 itwould have made a world of difference.”

David Marsh, the Guardian’s production editor and an EGA mentor,said: “It's good for the girls because we are really helping to widen theirhorizons, making them realise that university and jobs like journalism arefor the likes of them, too, not just for kids from middle-class backgrounds.It's good for Guardian staff too because instead of just writing about theproblems of inner-city schools, people who live on council estates in poorareas, we are actually getting out and finding out a bit about it. It's

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Volunteer reader, Mary Collingborn at HughMyddleton primary school

“I went to a school not at all dissimilar to EGAand I know that if I'd hada mentor at the age of 14it would have made a world of difference”Hannah Pool, commissioning editor, Weekend Guardian

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broadening our horizons, just as it is those of the pupils. It's good for thecompany. Everyone at the school is thrilled to bits at our involvement.That goes beyond the school too, to the families and friends of the girls.It's raising our profile in the local area and showing we don't just sit inour ivory tower, writing about stuff in a detached way. Involvement in thecommunity fits in with the whole ethos of the newspapers and thecompany.”

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“Everyone at the school is thrilled to bits at our involvement. Thatgoes beyond the schooltoo, to the families and friends of the girls”David Marsh, assistant editor (production)