Christmas cards

This innovative joint venture between our California and Nottingham offices, invited seven schools local to these offices to create a global corporate Christmas card to send to our clients and suppliers. Our people in the UK and the USA selected the winning designs (12 in total – one from each of the schools in the UK and six from the USA school) and the cards were then professionally produced to a total of 40,000. A sum per card was donated to the global children’s charity International Save the Children. The children that designed the top three most popular pictures from each school were presented with a framed copy of their design and a book token. The winning designers were presented with their cards in a frame with the original artwork.

Location: Nottingham, UK and Costa Mesa, US
Financial donation: $14,800
Community benefits: The children who participated received encouragement and recognition for their work, and enjoyed the chance to design a card that would be produced in huge numbers and sent around the Globe. The project also raised a donation for Save the Children. But perhaps the most significant benefit was the new relationships fostered between the schools which has led to the innovative e-pals project.

Adopted schools UK

Experian works with six local schools to offer a range of volunteering activities; reading, gardening, painting, e-mentoring and work experience, and delivering business skills courses to pupils taking part in Young Enterprise and the Industrial Trust programmes. Our people get involved, spending time in the schools working with the students. Other employees act as student mentors via a safe and secure email system (e-volve). The project is also supported by financial donations to provide educational trips and projects at each school.

Location: Nottingham, UK
Financial donation: $15,000
Community benefits: Mentoring and support to local schools can make a huge difference to their effectiveness, and really transform the lives of young people. Our volunteers last year spent over 600 hours reading with the six schools, which is rewarding for them but a real boost to the confidence of the students and a real help to busy teachers.

Adopted schools US

By partnering with a school across the street from its corporate headquarter location in Costa Mesa, CA, Experian Americas is able to strengthen its ties within the community, and play an active role in educating young people Experian collaborates with the Santa Ana School District to provide the students at Taft Elementary with educational field trip opportunities, mentoring partnerships and semester achievement awards. Each year, Experian employees have the chance to interact directly with the students at Taft through our Junior Achievement Day.

Location: Costa Mesa, CA
Financial donation: $3,000
Community benefits: Mentoring and support to local schools can make a huge difference to their effectiveness, and really transform the lives of young people.

e-Pals

The students in the six UK and one US schools who designed our corporate Christmas card, were keen to make a direct connection with each other. We selected classes of matching ages, and set up the e-volve email system that we also use for our e-mentoring project with another of our Nottingham adopted schools. Students are now in touch with electronic pen-pals across the Atlantic Ocean, via a secure system that allows the teachers and the project manager to access the student’s emails to ensure the content is safe and appropriate.

Location: Nottingham, UK and Costa Mesa, US
Financial donation: None
Community benefits: The e-pals correspondence between the students will relate directly to educational work that each school is doing with the aim being to learn from each other and begin a lasting relationship between the schools. This programme is proving very popular and has plans for expansion next year.

The Experian Robin Hood Festival of Running

Experian supports one of the most important marathon races in the UK, attracting a field of 13,000 runners. Staging the event involves over 1,000 Experian people every year, either running or helping as course marshals or drink station volunteers. We also provide our Mosaic software to help with race planning and promotion. Young runners take part in the 2.5 mile Don Scott Mini Marathon, and Experian supports this strongly, promoting the event to Nottingham schools, subsidising runners’ entry fees and organising an annual designer competition for the official race t-shirt.

Location: Nottingham, UK
Financial donation: $132,000
Community benefits: This is the largest participation sporting event in the East Midlands with over 13,000 runners, promoting fitness and activity, particularly among young people. A further $136,000 is raised for charity by runners taking part in the event.

Business school case study - Credit Expert

Experian has worked with The Times 100 business studies schools resource to provide a case study based on our CreditExpert service. The resource has a potential reach of 600,000 pupils studying business studies each year and this is the second year we have paid for a case study in the pack, which is both printed and online. The case study focuses on marketing, using the successful promotion of CreditExpert as a case study to illustrate marketing strategy.

Location: Across the UK
Financial donation: None
Community benefits: Business school students are able to learn based on real company case study data.

Take 5ive

The Take 5ive project has created a series of short films with ten primary schools from inner city Nottingham. The project worked with school councils to identify the “five” best aspects of their school and the “five” things they would change to make them even better. The films aim to give inspiration, meaning and motivation to decision makers and service providers to make real changes in policy and environment to improve the lives of local children, families and staff. A number of local authorities across England are adopting the United Nations Conventions of the Rights of the Child in shaping their services. Mosaic has been given as in kind support and is being used to locate similar inner city areas across the UK to encourage other forums to empower children to make changes in their local areas.

Location: Nottingham
Financial donation: $22,000
Community benefits: The 12 films were premiered in front of an influential audience at Nottingham’s independent cinema and celebrated the children’s achievement. Following this screening, the children’s ideas for change were listened to and will be actioned.