All over the UK, volunteers are making amazing contributions to the communities they live in. The West Midlands Interchange (WMI)* is no exception and is proud to share that we’ve already delivered over 100 hours of volunteering work. From attending careers fairs, delivering employer talks and insight days at local schools and colleges, as well as providing specialist skills at The Kingswood Trust to support outdoor learning.

The team recently spent the day volunteering at the local sailing club. Greensforge Sailing Club at Calf Heath Reservoir is a family friendly club, and as a close neighbour of the project we were keen to support.

Principal of the club, Ian Cooper told us “ the WMI team have put in some hard graft and we achieved a great deal. The club’s exterior especially looks totally revamped. The weather was perfect and it was great to tick a lot of items off the ‘to do’ list, lunch was great and no-one fell in the lake!”

As well as painting the exterior of the clubhouse, we cleared gutters, installed protective tyres around the jetty, tidied the vegetation, stripped fittings off redundant vessels, and erected open-day banners for the 9 June ‘Discover Sailing’ day. As well as getting our hands dirty we put our engineering skills into play replacing a troublesome pair of Brenton bolts on the clubhouse.

Michel Kirkland, LCP Director – Development Management says, “Everyone had a great day and left with a great level of satisfaction over what we had achieved. It was also great to hear that the sailing club’s bid in the WMI community funding was successful.”

The WMI Community Fund worth £65k is available now for local community projects. Applications are being managed by South Staffordshire District Council, and the Sailing Clubs bid will be used to buy a new sustainable outboard motor for the safety boat and to revamp the clubhouse kitchen.

*The West Midlands Interchange (WMI) is a £1bn project spanning 734-acres on land west of Junction 12 of the M6 in South Staffordshire, incorporating a Strategic Rail Freight Interchange (SRFI) to create an intermodal logistics hub.