elephant in the community: November update

November has been a busy and wide-ranging month for elephant's community investment programme.

The elephant team has started work on its creativity awards programme with schools. The first two schools are on board and the initiatives kick off in December. Creative thinking is core to what elephant is about and supporting the creative skills of young people has emerged as a natural concept to develop and been well received.

Last week, the team gave a talk at the University of Exeter business school with Lindsay, a former Exeter graduate, talking about the challenges and opportunities facing communications and marketing in a changed economic climate. The session also involved a student creative challenge, which will result in one or two of the postgraduates getting paid work at elephant during the Easter holiday. Overall, the lectures and talks have gone down well during 2012, a great way to make new friends and share ideas. More is planned for 2013.

Finally, it was almost a year ago that elephant ran its first free PR advice day for small businesses. Since then, this programme has mushroomed significantly. Having met and helped dozens of small businesses, it is apparent there is so much drive, ideas and ambition in the sector - but more needs to be done to help small firms use PR to help business growth. The concept of our free advice days was something Guy was committed to from day one and  our small business days will be back in 2013, with the first date of the New Year set for 18^th January.

In the last 12 months, everyone at elephant has got involved with the four prongs of our community investment programme. We’re delighted to support two causes we care about with 5% of our profits and the free time we also give to schools and small businesses has become an integral part of what elephant is about. Aside from our national and international client work, we’re keen to put something back into the community in a meaningful way.