The team from Amazon’s fulfilment centre in Knowsley has donated £8,000 and over 200 hours of volunteering to charities in Knowsley, Kirkby and Liverpool since January.

In the past six months, Amazon has donated £5,000 to domestic abuse charity The First Step, £1,500 to Centre 56 and £1,500 to North West Air Ambulance, which is based next to the fulfilment centre on the Moorgate Road.

The First Step seeks to stop domestic violence and abuse in Knowsley and is the only independent specialised domestic abuse service in the area.

The First Step work with survivors of abuse from the point of crisis and offer immediate interventions to reduce risk.  They offer longer-term trauma informed specialised support including one-to one support, group recovery programmes, children and young people support and emergency refuge provision for women and children.

Alongside the donation, the fulfilment centre team is working with The First Step to create an employment project for survivors of domestic abuse in Knowsley and the surrounding areas. The project’s aim is to help people who have left abusive relationships into a stable and supportive working environment.

Team members from Amazon have also committed over 200 hours to maintaining The Eco Therapy Garden in Kirkby and providing logistics support to staff and volunteers at Knowsley Foodbank. These initiatives will continue weekly throughout the rest of the year.

Amazon is also taking its sustainability initiatives further by partnering with One Knowsley, the leadership organisation for Knowsley’s voluntary, community, faith and social enterprise sector. A tree-planting project hosted by the organisations will commence later this year to transform green spaces around Kirkby.

Speaking on the donations and volunteering, Tom Allen, Site Leader at Amazon’s fulfilment centre in Knowsley, said: “I look back on the past few months with great pride, knowing that my team continues to make a significant, positive impact on the lives of people in our community in Knowsley and beyond. The year is only getting started, and we have many more plans to work with organisations like The First Step and Knowsley Foodbank to make Knowsley and the surrounding areas even better places to live and work.”

Peter Hopkins, an employee from Amazon in Knowsley who volunteers at The Eco Therapy Garden every week, added: “I love putting on my orange Amazon volunteer t-shirt every Wednesday and heading to The Eco Therapy Garden to plant trees, mow lawns and weed flowerbeds. I’m very pleased to work at a company that values giving back and building relationships with other local people and organisations. It’s a real privilege to have time built into my work schedule to volunteer.”

Jenny Dennett, Domestic Abuse Community Services Manager from The First Step, said:

“We are excited as an organisation to be working collaboratively with Amazon to improve their response to domestic abuse.  We have supported the development of the Domestic Abuse Policy and designed a bespoke training offer which we are delivering to the local Amazon staff which will improve their understanding of the impact of domestic abuse and ensure an improved disclosure response.

“On behalf of The First Step team, we would like to say thank you to Amazon for their partnership approach to support local survivors of domestic abuse back into work, removing poverty and giving them a sense of purpose.”

Amazon supports the communities where it operates and has delivered free computer science and STEM education programmes to more than 700,000 students across the UK through Amazon Future Engineer.

Amazon helps community organisations transport meals and other essentials to families in need through its pro bono logistics programme, Amazon Local Good, including more than seven million healthy breakfasts to children at risk of hunger in partnership with Magic Breakfast. And through its Multibank initiative, co-founded with former UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown, Amazon has supported more than 200,000 families experiencing poverty, with the donation of more than 2 million surplus essential goods.

Amazon partners with Comic Relief to help people tackle poverty and is the official home of the charity’s iconic Red Nose. Together with its employees, customers, and partners, Amazon has raised over £4.8 million to fund projects that support people struggling with the cost-of-living crisis and tackle issues such as homelessness, mental health problems, and food insecurity across the UK, and around the world.