Pfizer's day with Amy and Friends
The Customer Access directorate at Pfizer focused their minds on small charity Amy and Friends during a departmental offsite meeting.
As a newly formed department, the Customer Access directorate at Pfizer wanted to use some of the time at a departmental offsite meeting to introduce colleagues to one another and to help them to work collaboratively. They chose to do so by engaging in a project that would make a real difference to a health-related charity by using their business skills to work on the charity’s strategic issues and challenges. The initiative was part of Health Relief, Pfizer’s volunteering programme.
Amy and Friends is a very small yet inspiring charity that supports children, and their families, with the rare genetic disease Cockayne Syndrome. It is run by a husband and wife team, Jayne and Mark Hughes, whose inspirational daughter Amy is a Cockayne Syndrome sufferer. Jayne and Mark were grappling with issues such as capacity building, developing fundraising and volunteering strategies and raising the awareness of Cockayne Syndrome amongst the medical community – topics that were addressed by the Pfizer team over a day, resulting in invaluable advice and ideas for Amy and Friends and a rewarding and inspiring experience for the Pfizer team.
“Working with Three Hands enabled Pfizer to provide a really useful and effective day in which our colleagues were able to use their skills and expertise to help a small charity find solutions to some of their day-to-day challenges. Being able to tap into the expertise of Three Hands and use their excellent facilitators ensured a day of results which were beneficial to all parties involved.”
Pfizer Organiser
“I would strongly recommend volunteering as part of a team development programme for any company. For me, it was great to take a step back, look at our skills and see how we best use them to help support an important charity like Amy and Friends. This experience has helped reinforce my passion for working in the healthcare environment.”
Customer Access Colleague, Pfizer
“It was very positive to have such a knowledgeable group of people working together to share their ideas for our charity. We found the day extremely useful, the Pfizer team were highly motivated and caring and Three Hands were excellent facilitators who very quickly grasped the concept of how we work and where we want to take our group. Following our day together we have received support from both Pfizer and Three Hands, both of whom we are more than grateful to.”
Jayne Hughes, Amy and Friends