Our Corporate Partner: Toyota
Our amazing relationship with Toyota GB began as a Charity of the Year partnership in 2017. Toyota’s initial aim was to support a working guide dog partnership for 10,000 days over the course of a year. This was achieved after six months and our partnership continued for 3 years!
What we've achieved
Our partnership grew from strength to strength. We smashed our fundraising target, raising over £300k since 2017, achieving thousands of hours of mobility support to people with sight loss.
The Toyota team really embraced the opportunities that the partnership brought.
Education and awareness
Education of employees was important to Toyota as a part of its inclusion and diversity objectives. Staff had the opportunity to learn about sight loss through talks, workshops and blindfold walks. All helping them to develop more understanding around the challenges of mobility. They even held their own Guide Dogs Awareness week, helping other people learn about sight loss and the work that Guide Dogs does to support adults, young people, children and their families, both with and beyond the guide dog.
Customised employee volunteering opportunities
The team was keen to get some hands-on volunteering experience to harness existing skills and develop new ones. Staff were able to support Guide Dogs through numerous and diverse activities, such as helping at events, individual giving, and they even have a fully qualified sighted guide volunteer. Toyota even offered Guide Dogs some pro bono support from their Continuous Improvement Team, providing their skills to Guide Dogs' renowned harness workshop, where thousands of harnesses are made for our guide dogs and other assistance dogs across the world.
Fundraising, team collaboration and fun!
The whole Toyota GB team pulled together. Through fundraising activities, challenge events and awareness-raising opportunities, our partnership has supported team collaboration, team and personal achievement, and bonding across the organisation - all to help people with sight loss live more actively, independently and well.
We’ve done so much together. Some of the key achievements of the Toyota team include:
- Educating employees about sight loss as part of their inclusion and diversity goals
- Had lots of fun with the Director’s Challenge that saw employees walking and cycling the length of Hadrian’s Wall, raising £60,000
- Held a 'Song for Guide Dogs', singing their way to raise £11,500
- Engaged in nationwide employee fundraising, including Toyota local dealerships, such as quiz nights, hey sales from Toyota UK's own on-site honeybees, recycled Toyota merchandise sales and much more!
- Numerous employee volunteering opportunities, which included a member of staff qualifying to become a sighted guide
- Guide Dog Annual Awards transport sponsorship
Toyota has sponsored four lovely puppies, including, the lifetime of a guide dog, helping further transform the lives of people living with a vision impairment.
Toyota prides itself on being a good corporate citizen and this means being active in our local community through charitable donations, financial support, provision of pro bono workshops or staff volunteering. It’s easy to be a good corporate citizen when times are good, but it’s more important to be one when times are hard. Our local community is not just the area around our head office in Epsom but throughout the UK via our centre network and we’d like to thank our staff and centre partners for supporting us across our range of charitable initiatives in such a difficult year.
A remarkable partnership for which all of us at Guide Dogs extend a heartfelt thank you. All the amazing staff that participated are helping make such a big difference to people with sight loss.
Get in touch with our corporate partnerships team