Open Road is our Colchester office’s new nominated charity

As of March 2024, we have selected Open Road to benefit from our support. An established drug and alcohol recovery support charity in Essex and Medway, Open Road provides services to support individuals on their journey to recovery from drug and alcohol addiction. As well as the Open Road centres, many will be familiar with brightly coloured SOS community buses that operate in both Colchester and Chelmsford. The organisation also provides outreach services and criminal justice services addressing the issues which cause or may cause the vulnerable to offend. Perhaps less well known is the work the Open Road team do with businesses in particular, its “Wellbeing in the Workplace” programme.

Open Road will provide our team with a focus for its fundraising activity. However, more importantly, as former Mayor of Colchester and Open Road SLT Support Officer, Tim Young explains, are the non-fundraising opportunities that will come from working with a local business such as ourselves:

“Fundraising is of course important to Open Road. We need money to fund this specialist community need not met by statutory services. However, we also need to raise awareness of our services to corporates and the opportunity to change perceptions of the potential for reformed and supported people with substance misuse issues to be excellent employees. We are grateful to Streets Whittles and by association the wider Streets Chartered Accountants, for providing us with access to the firm’s expertise, encouragement and network. We look forward to working with the team on a number of awareness-raising projects”.

These projects currently include a series of podcasts, part of The Streets Sessions, to highlight the wide range of business and individual client services provided by Open Road. There is also a webinar being planned involving HR specialists that will focus on “Wellbeing in the Workplace” which includes drug testing, HR policy shaping and building staff awareness.

Streets Whittles Partner, Michael Greene, explains the choice of charity: “There are so many good causes in the communities in which we all live and work and they all deserve our support. However, Open Road has particularly impressed us with its clarity of vision and recognition that support is not just about the money. We see a role in being able to highlight the need for support in the key region the charity operates.”

Streets Marketing Partner, James Pinchbeck, adds: “With our current network of 23 offices and 240 staff, Streets Chartered Accountants is also well placed to promote the importance of Open Road and its work within our practice. We will aim to increase awareness of its services to businesses across our diverse portfolio of entrepreneurial growth companies.”

As well as being the nominated charity, we will be celebrating our closer involvement with Open Road when we act as main sponsor for an event on the 24th July at The Mercury, featuring Suffolk-born soprano Laura Wright.