Creating an outdoor space at Ronald McDonald House

27 Mar 2019

The University of Manchester partner with Roc Technologies to create an outdoor space at Ronald McDonald House

On Thursday, 28 February 2019, staff from IT Services at The University of Manchester and Roc Technologies ‘kick-started’ their partnership by participating in a charity day. This event saw the organisations working together to deliver a sustainable solution for an important cause.

The chosen charity was Ronald McDonald House Charities (UK). This charity enables parents to stay as close as possible to their children receiving treatment at Royal Manchester Children's Hospital and St Mary's Neonatal Unit, whilst providing everything a family could need to make themselves feel at home. Ronald McDonald Houses have already provided free ‘home away from home’ accommodation to over 50,000 families, enabling children to have their relatives close by whilst undergoing treatment.

The team of volunteers, included a number of IT Services colleagues and colleagues from Roc Technologies. The team had one key objective in mind – to further enhance the garden facilities for the residents; with an aim to provide them with a feeling of normality away from the hospital wards, as well as a place to visit during their stay.

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The day before there was an important briefing and planning session which saw IT Services Network Engineer, Julie Gregory, volunteer as the team lead and project manager for the day – quite a daunting task. Julie reflected on the task being a real team effort, “The charity day was a thoroughly enjoyable and rewarding day. I enjoyed leading the project and the team worked so hard together to enable us to fully complete the project. Amazing team work by all.”

Mike Fairley, House Manager at the Ronald McDonald House Manchester commented “We’re grateful to The University of Manchester and Roc Technologies for picking us as their chosen charity. We’re sure the outdoor space will bring great joy to our patients over the years.”

The build was themed around the very well-known symbol of Manchester, the worker bee, and will be used as a chill out space for older children. The area the team constructed was given a name chosen by the charity as ‘The Place to Bee’.

This is the first step in a strategic partnership between The University of Manchester and Roc Technologies, who together will transform the University’s network infrastructure to support the future ambitions to be a fully digital University. Tim Bretman, Head of Project Practice at Roc Technologies commented “Roc Technologies is committed to giving back to the local communities that we work in. We’re delighted that The University of Manchester shares our values and believe that this event will be a great way to both integrate our teams, whilst also giving something back to an organisation that supports families on a day to day basis.”