CSV Anniversary Celebration

Speech by exploration director Russ Bellis at an event at the Palace of Westminster in London celebrating Community Service Volunteers (CSV) operations in the UK.

20 July 2010

My Lord, Ladies and Gentlemen, good evening!  Exxon Mobil has enjoyed a highly productive and successful relationship with Dame Elisabeth Hoodless and Community Service Volunteers over more than 20 years and so it gives us great pleasure to be sponsoring this evening’s celebration here at the Palace of Westminster.

There may be one or two of you here tonight who have not heard of ExxonMobil.  I'm sure, however, that you will have heard of our famous brand names, Esso and Mobil.  We are the world's largest privately-traded energy company, and every day we help meet the energy needs of millions of people around the world.

We are here tonight because we believe that volunteers can play a crucial role in improving life in local communities.  We also believe that businesses have an important role to play in supporting the communities where they operate.

For the past eight years we have encouraged our employees and their families to get involved in voluntary work by giving grants totalling more than £1 million to the organisations where they act as volunteers.

We also hold a special ExxonMobil Day of Caring each year in which hundreds of UK employees volunteer their services to work on community projects in company time.

Our enthusiasm for volunteering can be traced back to 1988 when we first got together with CSV, backing a campaign to encourage the teaching of citizenship in schools. I’m delighted to say the campaign was a complete success. Citizenship has been on the National Curriculum since 2002, and millions of young people in this country now have a clear understanding of their rights and responsibilities, play their part in the community and take their place as active citizens.

That breakthrough was due in great part to the vision, inspiration and sheer hard work of Dame Elisabeth and her colleagues at CSV.

I’m pleased to say that since then we have sponsored CSV handbooks, resource materials and training resources for teachers to enable them to implement the citizenship curriculum.

ExxonMobil has also been a long-term supporter of CSV's environmental work, funding partnership projects with the National Trust and with conservation groups.

This evening’s event is actually the fourth CSV Birthday celebration to be sponsored by ExxonMobil. We believe that such celebrations provide due recognition for the hard work and dedication of CSV volunteers.  

In closing, on behalf of ExxonMobil, I would like to say a big thank you to Dame Elisabeth and her colleagues at CSV for all their hard work, inspiration and achievements.  They have certainly helped and inspired ExxonMobil to be a good corporate citizen, just as they have inspired hundreds of thousands of individuals in the UK to do their bit for the community.