We aim to engage with the local communities where our operations are based, as well as nationally and internationally. We continue to build strong relationships with our neighbours, suppliers and customers in order to maximise our contribution to the communities that they, and we, support. As well as recognising the philanthropic benefits we can offer, our work in this area helps to improve the awareness and reputation of our businesses in their local communities and provides development opportunities for our employees.
It is important to our businesses to build strong relationships with their local communities and to encourage charitable initiatives. Our reputation and the trust we earn from local communities helps us to achieve our business objectives. For example, demonstrating our commitment to being a responsible trading partner helps us to attract and maintain good relationships with our customers and suppliers. It also ensures we remain an attractive, competitive employer.
Our employees and their businesses support many charities and community initiatives relevant to the countries and locations in which they operate. These are wide-ranging and include initiatives closely aligned with our business and its objectives, as well as charities for which our employees have a particular passion.
They include organisations engaged in health, welfare, sports, education, civic and community projects as well as culture and the arts. A number of established relationships have generated successful projects. For example, in the US we have worked for a number of years with Habitat for Humanity and in the UK the Company is a member of Business in the Community.
We have reviewed our approach to charitable giving during the year with the aim of achieving more effective relationships with selected partners. A Group policy on charitable donations will be introduced in the next financial year that will more closely align our charitable giving and our community engagement activity with our employee development programmes as well as with aspects of our operations and product offering. We will focus our efforts on the built environment, homelessness, sustainability and climate change, environmental conservation and remediation, waste management and recycling, water quality and sanitation as well as literacy, numeracy and work-based skills.
Further details of the amount of charitable donations the Group made during the year can be found in Donations.
More information about our CR programme, including further case studies, statistics and examples of our practices, awards and community engagement can be found on the Wolseley plc website at www.wolseley. com/corporate-responsibility.aspx.