Thomson Financial serves 500 hungry players
Posted on 01/10/2007
At this year’s Copenhagen 2007 Homeless World Cup Thomson Financial sponsored India to secure their debut participation and 40 volunteers from offices in London, Cardiff, Shannon, Frankfurt, and Zurich rolled up their sleeves to make a big difference volunteering across all areas at the tournament throughout the week.
They lent their enthusiasm, commitment and organisation skills to serve breakfast, lunch, dinner to 500 very hungry players; sell soft drinks to the crowd; run the media centre, including writing editorial and online match reports; run the scoreboards and even acting as security for Homeless World Cup ambassador, Eric Cantona’s player training session and press conference.
Throughout the week daily reports to Thomson kept the international offices engaged in the volunteers experience, how the Indian team were doing, and the excitement of the Cup as 48 nations battled it out to win the Trophy.
Even before the tournament had even got started, each volunteer had raised a minimum of £100 towards Homeless World Cup project development to ensure that football is available all year round to people who are homeless and excluded. With the Thomson financial matchmaking services the total amount raised was over £10,000.
Mixing with the players, with colleagues from other offices whilst making a genuine big difference to the tournament and the lives of others was a hit with Thomson’s employees:
“It has been a huge pleasure and experience to be part of the Homeless World Cup, to meet and talk to the players and our colleagues from other offices. It, once again, opened my eyes to realise how privileged and lucky I am to have a job, own home and be fully integrated in the social network. Feeling how thankful and happy these homeless people were to be parts of the games was heartbreaking in a good sense!”
“It was extremely rewarding to meet the players first hand and see the gratitude and thanks on their faces. Especially through the teams that Thomson sponsored as they new by our logo that the fundraising and support of our company made it possible for them to attend and in turn hopefully build a better life.”
“It was a real credit to Thomson that everyone was so motivated for something outside many people's comfort zone and I was really proud to be in a group that made a profound difference to a great event.”
Read some of their articles and quotes here
