National Volunteering Week:- Spotlight on Evalian.
Why did Evalian choose to support the IPF?
“The decision was an easy one for us, as one of our colleagues has first hand experience of the impact the RFU IPF makes on injured players and their family’s lives.
Head of Data Protection & AI at Evalian, Ray, suffered a catastrophic spinal injury playing rugby at 17 years old. The IPF team has been instrumental in ensuring Ray and his family have had the care, emotional and financial support they have needed over the years.
“The IPF is very close to my heart so it's awesome that Evalian has chosen to support the IPF this year. Since my accident, the IPF has supported me immensely, in many ways, both financially and pastorally so I'm glad that we are doing what we can to support this great charity.”
Ray Orife, Evalian’s Head of Data Protection & AI
2023 saw the 20 year anniversary of Ray’s injury, and to mark this event, his wife organized a fundraising Christmas ball, raising over £20,000 for the charity. Evalian had the opportunity to sponsor a table for the event, and we were blown away hearing personal stories and the enormous impact that the IPF has for people who have experienced traumatic injuries.
Although still in the early stages of planning our fundraising events for the year, we have already had a company bake sale, raising over £860 from selling cakes in both of our main offices and surrounding businesses. Evalian agreed to match whatever amount was made by employees, and so we are delighted to be able to donate just over £1700 in our first fundraising event.
A small group of us took the opportunity to volunteer to form part of the IPF’s “Cheer Squad” at the recent London Marathon. The atmosphere on the day was buzzing, and the wider team are keen to get involved in more volunteering opportunities in future where they can.
We have plans to host more fundraising activities throughout the year, and have made this into an internal competition within the company. With a predominantly remote workforce, spread out across the UK, engagement can be a challenge. By splitting into two teams, North and South, we hope to encourage company-wide engagement and inclusion, in parallel with raising money for this fantastic charity.
Our plans for fundraising include a luxury raffle, a gameathon, some virtual competitions, various physical activities such as steps challenges, and hopefully some bigger fundraising events, like a sponsored hike or potentially an event hosted by Evalian. We are looking forward to getting stuck into more volunteering opportunities that arise for the charity, and seeing how everyone’s donations help support injured players and their loved ones.”
Evalian volunteers recently took to being stellar raffle ticket sellers at our Vets Day 2024 on Saturday 25th May. The event itself has raised more than £110,000 & we wouldn’t have been able to achieve what we have without the support from Evalian.
Want to find out more about how your company or community organisation can get involved with the RFU Injured Players Foundation?
