Through partnerships with London Wildlife Trust, The Conservation Volunteers and Felix and by involving employees in meaningful volunteering, we endeavour to strengthen communities, restore habitats and reduce waste.
Our efforts focus on improving wellbeing and long-term environmental outcomes by helping nature recovery, improving access to green spaces and creating pathways into green careers, particularly in urban and peri-urban areas.
Our partners: restoring nature, widening access and reducing waste
London Wildlife Trust
Investec has supported London Wildlife Trust in various ways since 2018, including funding environmental traineeships for underrepresented young people and helping to protect vital habitats, including London’s rare chalk grasslands.
Wild Work Days
Our volunteers take part in Wild Work Days, supporting practical conservation efforts across the Trust’s nature reserves.
The days offer employees hands-on team-building while contributing directly to habitat restoration, biodiversity and access to local green spaces.
We work with London Wildlife Trust to protect and enhance 40 hectares of chalk downland and habitat across West Kent Golf Course, Chapel Bank and Hutchinson’s Bank. This includes wildlife surveys that guide reserve management and identify opportunities to reintroduce native species.
Keeping it Wild programme
We continue to support London Wildlife Trust’s Keeping it Wild programme, which helps young people aged 16–25 from underrepresented backgrounds build skills and confidence as well as providing pipelines into careers in nature conservation. Since 2018, the programme has offered paid traineeships to young people experiencing racial inequity, disability and low income, while supporting climate action and nature recovery across London.
Traineeships
A total of 14 trainees took part in FY2026. Of these, 11 have secured paid roles across the green sector, including in environmental education, ecology, community gardening, animal husbandry and conservation.
Trainees build practical experience through skills workshops, conservation sessions, education activities and youth engagement events.
Hear from one of the trainees:
“A massive thank you to the Trust for supporting me from the beginning of my journey, when I started as a Trainee, not knowing much about the conservation sector, HATED any form of public speaking and lacking confidence in myself – till now, someone who is confident in the work I do and ready to shout at the top of my lungs about the importance of London wildlife! LWT really helped me find my voice and I’ll be forever grateful for that.”- Keeping it Wild Trainee
Residential bird watching
Habitat management at Great North Wood
© Arnhel de Serra
Residential boat trip
Green Careers Showcase
As part of Keeping it Wild, we helped fund London Wildlife Trust’s Green Careers Showcase, which promotes pathways into the green sector, including conservation, ecology, environmental education and habitat restoration.
The showcase places a particular focus on young people from Black, Asian and minoritised ethnic backgrounds, who remain underrepresented in the green sector. It supports the Trust’s ambition to make environmental causes more relevant and accessible to local communities.
Youth Board
We also support the Youth Board: a group of young people who are passionate about London’s wildlife and committed to ensuring young people’s perspectives help shape the Trust’s work.
Our funding helps provide an annual residential weekend for new members, supporting them to build relationships, set priorities and develop the skills and confidence to contribute to the Trust’s work.
The Conservation Volunteers
Since 2023, we have partnered with The Conservation Volunteers (TCV), a charity that improves green spaces and enagages communities in conservation efforts. Through corporate volunteering days, employees take part in practical conservation work under expert guidance.
These team-building days help colleagues learn new skills, connect with local communities and spend time outdoors, while supporting conservation activities tailored to each site.
In FY2026, 160 of our employees have participated in various activities, from habitat creation to pond maintenance. Impressively, 98% of colleagues reported improved wellbeing after participating in TCV volunteering activities.
These efforts not only contribute to the preservation and improvement of local ecosystems but also offer a wealth of benefits for our employees, including increased motivation, enhanced skills and self-confidence, improved team building and communication, and our overall focus on addressing climate change. Through this partnership, we support the vital work of TCV and demonstrate our dedication to environmental stewardship and community engagement.
Common Tern Raft Project
We fund and support conservation projects such as predator-proof wooden rafts that help protect Common Terns, an Amber-listed species on the UK Birds of Conservation Concern list. Our volunteers played a key role in completing the final structural work on the raft; this work strengthens long-term habitat protection at Greenwich Peninsula Ecology Park, home to London’s largest Common Tern colony.
Each spring, these birds migrate from wintering grounds across Africa to nest and raise their chicks in the park, underlining the importance of protecting habitats across borders.
Felix
Since October 2022, Investec has partnered with Felix, a food redistribution charity that rescues surplus fresh food that would otherwise go unsold, prepares nutritious meals and redirects food to local communities that need it most.
Supermarkets often order more food than is ultimately sold, while farmers may produce beyond expected demand to account for factors such as weather, retailer specifications and fluctuations in demand. As a result, significant quantities of edible food can become surplus.
By recognising the interconnected nature of these issues, we work with Felix to divert surplus food away from landfill and toward those in need, effectively addressing one problem by mitigating another.
In FY2026, 160 Investec volunteers dedicated more than 828 hours to supporting meal preparation and the distribution of food orders to charities and community organisations across London.
Through this partnership, our support contributed to the redistribution of a reported 439,000 meals* to people and community organisations experiencing food insecurity, helping redistribute surplus food that may otherwise have gone to waste.
* Meal numbers are calculated using Felix's standard meal-equivalent methodology for the reporting period.
Download our environmental policy statements and reports
Investec Group Integrated Sustainability Report 2026
Learn more about our commitment to sustainability in the past financial year.