Our Community
Tideway is committed to giving back to the communities in which we work, leaving a lasting legacy for London through community partnerships, volunteering and charitable donations.
We have developed long-term partnerships to help us achieve our legacy commitment to support local communities and our vision of reconnecting London with the River Thames.
Staff working across the Tideway project volunteer their time to support good causes in London and close to their homes, using their professional skills where they can so that we can have an even greater benefit.
Tideway’s community investment programme supports thousands of people across London.
Tideway supports hundreds of organisations through investment and staff volunteering.
Up to Dec 2022 our staff have given more than 32,000 hours of their time to support our communities.
River Reconnection Partnerships
Thames River Watch
Thames River Watch, run by environmental charity Thames21, is a ‘citizen science’ project that involves community volunteers from across London helping to improve the public’s understanding of the health of the Thames and the challenges it faces.
Funded by Tideway since 2014 and by Tideway and Thames Water from July 2021 to June 2024, the programme has engaged communities up and down the river who have collected and counted thousands of single use plastic bottles and wet wipes.
Active Row
Active Row, our partnership with youth engagement charity London Youth Rowing (LYR), ran for four years until July 2021. It got more than 7,000 young people active through indoor and outdoor rowing, 68% of them from minority ethnic backgrounds, 42% female and 8% special educational needs – among those least likely to be engaged by ‘mainstream’ sports offerings. Tideway has also helped to fund LYR’s new base at London’s Olympic Park which opened in July 2021 and which is delivering multi-water sport sessions, including rowing in a large fixed seat ‘Thames skerry’ boat paid for by our staff fundraising.
Thames Discovery Programme
We also funded the Thames Discovery Programme, run by the Museum Of London Archaeology, to engage communities in river heritage through foreshore events, classrooms sessions, community lectures and workshops. The programme created a group of young ‘Tadpoles’ trained in foreshore heritage skills to complement and feed into the TDP’s existing adult Foreshore Recording and Observation Group.
Creekside Discovery Centre
In June 2021 we launched our partnership with the Creekside Discovery Centre in Deptford Creek. The centre is situated between our Greenwich and Deptford Church Street sites and our two-year grant funding began in autumn 2020 to help the centre through the pandemic. From summer 2021 the partnership is delivering seven new programmes including public training for mapping local wildlife; land and low-tide walks; family learning sessions and specialised certificated courses in creek know-how.
Case Studies and Downloads:
Sponsorship, Community Investment and Charitable Giving Policy
SEACC - Supporting All Residents
Wandsworth Community Fund Impact Report
Charitable Giving
Staff from across the Tideway project raise money for local and national good causes through charitable fundraising. Charities supported by the Tideway team are Time and Talents and The Felix Project, with a number of other charities supported by site teams.
The project comes together for major fundraising initiatives such as the Oarsome Challenge, which raised more than £100,000 in three years, and our 2020 Make a Difference campaign, which raised more than £20,000 to support more than 50 different organisations during the pandemic.
