Aviva staff’s rough night pays dividends for good cause

May 28 2010 by Denis Brown, Perthshire Advertiser Friday

A ROUGH night for insurance giant Aviva’s staff paid dividends for homeless children.

The sponsored sleep out, involving 42 employees bunking down outside the company’s Perth offices last Friday night, has so far surpassed the £6000 fundraising target by a whopping £5460.

Perth-based head of HR operations Sandra Scott, who co-ordinated the uncomfortable exercise, said she anticipated the total amount to keep climbing as participants put the hard word on colleagues.

“It will continue to go up as we’re still collecting after a night of hardship like that and making people who didn’t get involved feel guilty,” she said, half joking.

“We’re very happy with the result and thankfully it was a warm and sunny night – if it had been a week before, there would have been frost.”

Clocking on at 7pm, the restless crew – including Aviva’s UK insurance chief executive David McMillan, who flew in from Zurich especially – huddled up on bare concrete for a 12-hour shift.

“We were outdoors, beneath an undercover car park but outside and lying on concrete. Some people had things like yoga mats, cardboard or some padding and blankets and sleeping bags,” she said.

“Surprisingly, we did get some sleep. I got to sleep myself about 12.30am and then I remember hearing someone say, ‘it’s 5.50am’.

“It certainly wasn’t the most comfortable night’s sleep I’ve ever had, that’s for sure, but it was well worth the effort.”

Another nine UK Aviva locations participated – part of a national Street to School initiative to help vulnerable and homeless children get off streets and back into education – generating in excess of £100,000.

Aviva has teamed up with the Railway Children charity to tackle the plight of an estimated 100,000 UK children who run away from home or care every year.

She said prior to the sleep out concept being floated, she and her colleagues had no idea child homelessness was prevalent in Perthshire.

“We honestly thought that it wasn’t a big problem locally, but the deeper you dig the more you realise just how widespread an issue it is,” she said.

Railway Children chief executive Terina Keene said the Aviva partnership would help bring about greater public awareness of the distressing issue.