Community Partnership Awards

Winners of the 2009 Community Partnership Awards were announced at a prestigious luncheon in London on Thursday 15 October 2009.

Live tweets from 2009 Community Partnership Awards

During the Awards luncheon @KerenMcC and @Foodanddrinkfed 'tweeted' about our winners. If you want to catch up on our tweets, then simply search Twitter by for the hash tag #cpa.

An Inspiration for Others

The Food and Drink Federation's Community Partnership Awards celebrate the many different ways in which companies in our sector make a real difference through their community projects – whether that's working with local schools, sponsoring sports activities or supporting important civic projects.

As our winning entries clearly demonstrate, our sector is helping to educate, inspire and develop people right across the UK through a raft of exciting initiatives.

And it's testimony to the fact that these companies continue to see the importance of continuing to invest their time, money and effort in this work – despite the economic slowdown.

That's partly because food and drink companies are rightly proud of the close links they have with the communities in which they operate – and their commitment is long-standing; it stems from a time before such work was defined as 'corporate social responsibility'.

Clearly, our awards can only showcase a handful of the hundreds of industry-backed initiatives that are now underway in the UK. But the winners we are rewarding this year are all great examples of best practice – and their success helps to explain why the food and drink industry plays such an important role right at the heart of Britain's communities.

This year we have introduced a new category – to recognise the work companies are doing to reduce their environmental impact. We split this category into two sections – one looking at consumer-facing initiatives, the other rewarding business best practice.

We received an overwhelming number of entries for this new category – a clear reflection of the energy and passion being put behind such activities by food and drink companies of all sizes.

There was also plenty of competition in the existing categories, which highlight activities in the areas of

  • local community
  • culture
  • media and sport
  • education
  • workplace

In all, we have made 22 gold, silver, bronze and highly commended awards this year from a record number of entries. We think all our winning initiatives share one thing in common – they are making a positive difference to the everyday lives of people throughout the UK and the environment we all share.

We hope these case studies will act as an inspiration for other companies either to get started or to increase the scope of their community projects.

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