By clicking the Accept button, you agree to us doing so. More info Skip to main navigation Have a question? Contact our experts today on: sales@esp.co.uk Main navigation What we do Who we do it for Who we are Work for us Get in touch Charity We are committed to helping great causes across the world Get in touch ESP tries to make a difference to incredible organisations that are doing good in the world, and that need all the support they can get. Each year, we choose amazing charity partners to support with fundraising events, staff donations and public awareness campaigns. British Heart Foundation’s London to Brighton off-road bike ride - Sep 2021 Our Finance Director Paul Graham and Chairman Mike Harling tackled the gruelling British Heart Foundation’s London to Brighton off-road bike ride. This is Europe’s biggest charity mountain bike event at 100km and climbing over a 1000m along the way it tests even the strongest competitors! The British Heart Foundation funds over £100 million of research each year into all heart and circulatory diseases and the things that cause them. This event raised over £600,000 and we were proud to play our part in that! KidsOut Giving Tree - Dec 2020 Each year we support the KidsOut giving Tree. KidsOut provides positive experiences to bring smiles to children who have survived domestic violence. They uniquely work with every Women’s Aid Federation refuge in the UK and support over 65,000 children a year through the provision of Fun Days out and Toy Boxes for children in refuge. Between April and June 2020, KidsOut supported children and families living through Covid-19 in refuge with 5,362 boxes of brand-new toys 8,901 food vouchers! You can find out more about the organisation here https://www.kidsout.org.uk/giving-tree/ Last year we had Christmas trees set up in the office where people could leave a donated gift for the Charity. Covid-19 threw a spanner in the works but KidsOut didn't let that stop them! This year they created the KidsOut online shop where you can choose and donate a present for a child. This means that this year ESP extended our participation further than the Reading Office and anyone in the UK could take part! Christmas Jumper Day - Dec 2020 Not letting something as trivial as a global pandemic stop us from supporting Save the Children's Christmas Jumper Day, we substituted the usual whole-office picture with shots from home, with impressive results! Daisy's Dream Cheque Presentation Dec-19 It was lovely to welcome Ellen from Daisy’s Dream to our Reading office for a Christmas sale and to present the proceeds from our various fund-raising challenges during the year. It was heart-warming to hear from her how the money would be used, and really helped put the fundraising into perspective. “Daisy's Dream supports around 700 children per year who have experienced or are facing bereavement. Our therapists often go and spend time 121 with the children we support. Each hour session, which is free to the family, costs Daisy's Dream approximately £50 to fund. So your generous donation could fund 200 sessions of 1-2-1 time with a therapist. Around 4 to 5 times a year we run group events, getting around 20 children together for a day, to talk about their special person who died and also to play together, make a campfire and have a BBQ lunch. This breaks down the sense of isolation sometimes felt by bereaved children and helps them to see they’re not alone. This is entirely free to the children and families we support but each of these events costs Daisy's Dream around £1,000 to run. So your generous donation could fund 10 of these days! Thank you again for your hard work to raise this money, we really, really appreciate it.” Spartan Super 2019 - our charity fundraising target for the year is smashed! With two weeks of rain before the event on Sunday 6th Oct, the Spartan Super would have been better called a 14k mud slog. We literally waded through stinking waist deep mud more times than any of us could count, including some lost shoes and misjudged face-first submergings! To top all of that they threw in 25 obstacles that demanded climbing, leaping, swinging, heaving, hauling, dragging and to cap it all off, a leap through fire! But the ESP team of 18 brave people, some who’d never done an event like this, faced the challenge of the 25 obstacles across 14k in the same determined way that they have raised money this year for our charity, Daisy’s Dream. We set out to raise in excess of £10,000 for them, and with a year of running, Tough Mudder, a crazy mountain challenge and the Spartan Super I am delighted to announce that we have passed that milestone! I am so proud of everyone that has taken part in these events this year. The Welsh 3000s challenge batters the brave ESP Team for Daisy's Dream! It is rare to find a challenge that lives up to and then surpasses its billing, but the Welsh 3000s certainly does. Any one of the 15 mountains on their own would be a challenge, but doing them all in the space of 24 hours pushes the amateur walker to the extremes; physically, mentally and emotionally. Having tackled the National Three Peaks challenge several times, it was easy to think this would be much of the same, just a bit longer. Nothing could have been further from the truth. The first peak, Crib Goch, a ridge that stretches 200m with sheer drops either side would be daunting on a clear still day, but add in a howling gale and lashing rain and it severely tested even the best in our group. Where the Three Peaks sticks to well established paths, the Welsh 3000s encourages you to find the shortest route to the next peak, which involves physically grinding ascents, rapid descents - slipping and sliding over wet rocks and grass or through miles of loose shale. Hard on the legs, the knees and the mind as each step needs to be carefully planned. It broke some of us after 16 hours, with the prospect of another 7 hours in the dark and rain being just too much. But five of our group battled on through the night and finished at 5am, 24 hours after starting. I am so proud of them. The reason we all put ourselves through this was of course the fundraising for Daisy’s Dream, who provide bereavement support for children. We raised a further £3,000, taking the total so far this year to over £8,000. Our £10,000 for the year is in sight now! It’s not too late to donate, just visit: www.justgiving.com/esp2019 ~ Mike Harling, Chairman Our Tough Mudder team helps us to exceed our annual fundraising target, less than halfway through the year! On Sunday 6th May, a team of intrepid ESP volunteers took part in the London West Tough Mudder to raise money for local charity Daisy’s Dream. Run over 10 miles, with 25 challenging obstacles along its path, the Tough Mudder is an endurance event that is not for the faint-hearted. It’s designed to be run as a team, helping each other along the way, which made for a more enjoyable and motivated event for everyone involved. The 10-strong team never once lost their enthusiasm and positivity even in chilly conditions with a sun that refused to shine, and crossed the finish line together – raising over £1,000 for our chosen charity for 2019. Daisy’s Dream provides support to children and families in Berkshire affected by bereavement or the life-threatening illness of a loved one, and were a great support to the family of our inspirational co-founder, Darren Richardson, who sadly lost his brave fight against cancer in September 2018. The Tough Mudder was the latest in a series of events we have planned to raise money for this vital charity, and we are proud and thrilled to have already exceeded the £5,000 fundraising target we set ourselves for the year! Every penny will be used to help support people facing the hardest time of their lives, and we are grateful to all our participants and sponsors to date. It doesn’t stop there though. We are already in training for our next event – the Welsh 3000s Challenge, where a team from ESP will trek to the top of all 15 of the mountains over 3000 ft in Wales within the space of 24 hours without using any form of transport. If you want to spur on the ESP team and recognise their spirit and enthusiasm for making a difference to those in need, then our JustGiving page remains open for donations throughout the year; who knows, with your help maybe we can reach £10,000 for Daisy’s Dream! ESP smashes the Green Park Challenge for Daisy's Dream Thirty-five spirited members of the ESP team came together this month to dust off their running shoes and raise money for a charitable cause that has become close to our hearts. As you may know, our inspiring Managing Director, Darren Richardson, tragically passed away last September. During this difficult time, a local charity called Daisy’s Dream has been incredible in providing bereavement support to those close to Darren. As such, we want to do everything we can to give something back to Daisy’s Dream. Starting with some running. At 8.30am on Sunday 17th March, 35 bleary-eyed members of the ESP team headed off from the start line of the Green Park Challenge – running 3km before they’d even had their morning coffee. A crazy few among us (such as our Chairman, Mike Harling) carried on to do the Sage Reading Half Marathon, which at 13 miles is not a bad effort for a Sunday morning! We are so grateful to everyone who took part for bringing bags of enthusiasm and that can-do spirit that Darren championed so fiercely. You did an amazing job and did ESP proud. So far, we have raised £3,872.17 for Daisy’s Dream, which is not far off our target of £5,000 for the year. If you’d like to help us reach our total, you can donate on our JustGiving page. Do check out Daisy’s Dream if you haven’t already. They provide support to children and families in Berkshire affected by bereavement or the life-threatening illness of a loved one Solo abseil of Forth Rail Bridge Fearless ESP team member George Kinnear completed a solo Forth Rail Bridge Abseil Chest Heart & Stroke Scotland. The charity provides care, advice and support to people affected by coronary heart disease, stroke or chest illnesses, as well as funding medical research into prevention, diagnosis, treatment, rehabilitation and social impact, and aiming to influence public policy. The Forth Rail Bridge Abseil involves strapping up, leaning back and descending 165ft to the sandy beach at the bottom of the bridge. It’s definitely not an activity for the faint-hearted! By showing true ESP spirit and taking on the abseil on his own, George raised a whopping £795 for Chest Heart & Stroke Scotland. Pretty Muddy 2017 On Saturday 15th July, nine enthusiastic ladies from the ESP team took part in the Pretty Muddy event in Reading for Cancer Research UK, donning their pink sweatbands for 5km of mud, obstacles and plenty of fun. The team may have ended up soggy, tired and more brown than pink, but it was worth it. All in all, they raised £1,079 for Cancer Research UK, which we think is something to be pretty proud of! White Collar Boxing In June this year, one of our fearless (and now a little bruised!) account managers decided to fight back (literally) against a disease that has affected most of us in some way – cancer. Jeremy Newell, took part in white collar boxing to raise money for Cancer Research UK. Brilliantly, Jeremy raised more than £1,000 for Cancer Research UK! The Three Peaks Challenge 2017 One of the fundraising activities that we keep coming back to is the Three Peaks Challenge, which involves climbing the highest mountains in England, Scotland and Wales in just 24 hours. In July 2017, we completed the gruelling challenge for Marie Curie, raising an amazing £2,000, having done it two years before for Arrhythmia Alliance. It is hard work, but a great way to show our support! Reading Half Marathon 2017 On the 19th of March 2017, a few members of the ESP team dusted off their running shoes and showed what IT experts are really made of by getting stuck into the Reading Half Marathon. Now, running 13.1 miles with 15,000 other participants is not how we would usually choose to spend a Sunday, but this was for a very good cause. We raised just under £1,000 for Marie Curie – the UK’s leading charity for people living with a terminal illness, and ESP’s nominated charity for 2017. Three Peaks 2015 On Friday 26th June, a crazy team of ESP employees representing offices across the country embarked on the National Three Peaks Challenge. This challenge involves climbing the highest peaks in Scotland, England and Wales. As if that’s not difficult enough, you need to climb them all back to back. And just because someone decided that trivial creature comforts like eating and sleeping are only for the undedicated, you are also supposed to complete it in 24 hours! We raised an amazing £3,000 for the Arrhythmia Alliance Lilly-May Page campaign to help put automated external defibrillators into primary schools, following the tragic death of 5 year old Lilly-May Page outside her school in 2013. Pretty Muddy 2015 Pretty Muddy isn’t like any other fundraising event. It’s a 5K muddy obstacle course around the venue of Reading Festival, where women of any ability can climb, jog and walk all over cancer. ESP entered and amazing team who went well beyond their comfort zone. We’re so proud that they completed every single obstacle for such a good cause. In total they raised a fantastic £927.70 for Cancer Research UK, smashing their £300 target!! Tough Mudder In 2016, we took on the punishing mud run Tough Mudder to raise money for Epilepsy Research UK. Though the team was exhausted (and extremely wet and muddy) by the end, the fact that we raised a staggering £5,700 for our nominated charity made it all worthwhile. It is great fun and a real challenge, so we’d definitely do it again. Macmillan Day In August 2014 we had our first Company Charity Day with the objective of having some fun, a good opportunity to bid on stitching up the bosses and to raise some money for an incredible cause, Macmillan Cancer Support. So we thought why not make a day of it. Karen agreed to have her head shaved in the office, mike volunteered to have ice buckets thrown over him by the five highest bidders, Yvonne baked lots of cakes and we had a dress-down / fancy dress day in return for a small donation from each person. The whole day was an enormous success. We had a photographer covering the day from the local paper and raised a fantastic £2,302!! To find out more about our charity work, contact us today Get in touch Copyright ESP Global Services 2021 | Privacy Policy | Gender Pay Gap Statement | Modern Slavery Statement | Covid 19 risk assessment Head Office Site by Rouge Media Ask a question