'RedR Day’ to help lives devastated by disaster and conflict
Buro Happold staged a company-wide ‘wear Red for RedR Day’ at the end of February, raising a total of £1,383 for the aid and development charity RedR – the Register of Engineers for Disaster Relief. It is the second time the practice has run a RedR Day since the scheme started three years ago.
Throughout the day, the Bath head office held games and contests including a hole-in-one putting competition, a table football tournament, a sweepstake to guess the Oscar winners, a raffle and a cake sale, and raised a total of £644.
Meanwhile, Buro Happold’s London offices, in conjunction with masterplanning, development and urban design consultants EDAW, ran a "Wear Red for RedR" campaign and together raised £700 after expenses. Most notably, Lilian Relovska, group coordinator for Buro Happold’s Olympic bid group, organised a team event and raised over £200 of this amount, while the other London Buro Happold offices raised almost £500 through raffle ticket and cake sales. The smaller Birmingham office also contributed.
RedR UK helps to rebuild lives by providing aid workers with the skills they need to make a difference. The charity does this through delivering expert international and UK training programmes, running a recruitment service and supporting a membership scheme for professionals vital to relief and rehabilitation programmes around the world.
The Happold Trust is a long-term supporter of RedR
Buro Happold has long been involved with RedR; current chairman and founder partner of Buro Happold Rod MacDonald was also chairman of RedR for two years, and a trustee of the charity for six years before that. The Happold Trust financially supports the charity, and staff members frequently raise money for RedR individually, through marathons and other sponsored events.
“RedR has a particular expertise in the fields of engineering, security and health, so it’s a natural fit for engineering practices like Buro Happold to support them,” said MacDonald. “Buro Happold has helped raise thousands of pounds to help people blighted by war, natural disaster and famine, and RedR come to us when they need engineers to go to into the field as part of a relief project, or for technical information.”
RedR has deployed over 2,500 experts to worldwide relief efforts
RedR was inspired by one man’s personal experiences of working in a refugee camp, and has grown from a small register of volunteers to an international organisation which has deployed over 2,500 experts to worldwide relief efforts and runs an international programme of training courses.
In 1979 Peter Guthrie was working as an engineer with Scott Wilson Kirkpatrick when a huge exodus of Vietnamese boat people caused a refugee crisis in Malaysia. He was the only engineer in the camp for the three months he was there. “I saw the pressing need for engineers to help in this sort of work and compiled a register of engineers who could be called upon to work with frontline relief agencies,” he said.
Since then, RedR has worked to alleviate disasters across the world, including Ethiopia, Sudan and Rwanda in Africa; Bosnia and Kosovo in Europe; Iraq and Afghanistan in the Middle East, as well as coordinating some of the relief efforts following the tsunami which devastated parts of south-east Asia in 2004 and the earthquake in Pakistan in 2005.
“Buro Happold is very proud of its association with this enormously worthwhile charity, and we look forward to RedR Day successes in the future,” said MacDonald.
Ends
Note to Editors:
Buro Happold
Press office and practice information at www.burohappold.com
Images are available on request.
For more information, please contact:
Jenni O’Connor
PR Officer
Tel +44 (0)1225 320600 ext. 2937
Fax +44 (0)8707 874148
Email jenni.o’connor@burohappold.com
Buro Happold is a multi-disciplinary international practice of consulting engineers established in 1976. We now employ over 1,700 staff in 21 offices worldwide, and our aim is to produce high quality engineering design in concept, in detail and in execution, on time, to programme and delivering excellent value for money. Our distinctive culture and ethos is still based on the same principles of care, value and elegance that were established when the practice was founded.
We offer structural, building services, civil, infrastructure and façade engineering, as well as a broad range of specialist consultancy services including sustainability, ground and environmental engineering, fire and security design, health and safety management, inclusive and urban design, project management, and specialist CAD and computer simulation provision.
RedR, the Register of Engineers for Disaster Relief, was started in 1979 but formally established as a charity in 1982. Initially it relied mainly on volunteers and ran a small programme of training events. It has now deployed over 2,500 experts to help in disasters around the world, and runs international training programmes to equip aid workers to make a real difference in the fields of engineering, health and security. RedR’s mission is to relieve suffering caused by disasters by selecting, training and providing competent and committed personnel to humanitarian programmes worldwide.
EDAW is one of the world's leading design firms, with over 1600 professionals working from a network of 34 offices worldwide. The fusion of design, environment, economics and planning helps EDAW to balance their aesthetic, environmental, and social goals, and sustainability infuses the continuum of their services.
