Academy staff and volunteers from integrated infrastructure services firm AECOM recently spent two days painting and decorating rooms around the Academy, including the large school dining hall, in order to keep them a welcoming, comfortable and vibrant place for students.

AECOM are working with us on our New Build project in Exmouth – a world-class facility for Deaf education, due for completion in 2019. AECOM’S Corporate Responsibility program enables employees to take two-days paid working days per year for volunteering for charitable and not-for-profit organisations within the communities in which they work.

Until we relocate, the old buildings on the current site require a great deal of maintenance and upkeep. We are a charity so AECOM’s generous volunteer support meant that the much-needed painting and decorating could be carried out within a tight budget.

Academy Marketing Manager Helen Trebble said;

‘The team of 15 volunteers from AECOM’s Exeter Office worked tirelessly over two days to transform the rooms, and we are hugely grateful to them for their hard work – we know our students will love their freshly painted dining hall when they see it!’

Warren Thorne, Associate from AECOM said;

‘The work that Exeter Deaf Academy does within the local community is truly inspiring and we wanted to show our support for this great charitable organisation by bringing a team of volunteers from our Exeter Office to help out with the maintenance work happening at the Topsham Road site.

‘AECOM are committed to transforming the environments we live in – that is what we strive to do every day, this is our mantra. But what we also recognise is that in order to fulfil these grand aspirations, it is our responsibility to support the communities we live and work in too.’

See photos of before, during, and after the decorating below. As you can our students are chuffed with their new dining hall!