Employees from SSE in Portsmouth undertook the truly Jurassic task of helping Marwell Zoo get ready for its summer dinosaur exhibition.
Armed with shovels, trowels and plenty of muscle, the 20 employees from SSE’s Penner Road site, helped build fences, pull weeds and pour mulch into the new living areas for the life-like animatronic beasts for the Rise of the Dinosaurs exhibition.
This is the fifth time SSE employees have visited the zoo to lend a hand as part of the company’s employee volunteering scheme, Community at Heart, which gives every staff member a day’s paid leave to help a project in their local community.
Since August last year, over 100 employees have spent their volunteering day at the popular Hampshire visitor attraction.
Lorayne Harmer, an IT Team Leader at SSE, said: “Although it was an extremely busy day from start to finish, we all had a great laugh and an excellent time.
“It was pretty full on, we all had to use plenty of elbow grease to shift the fences, trim back weeds, plant large and unusual plants and pour tonnes of mulch into the exhibition areas.
“However, I think the sheer number of us meant that we were able to achieve a lot in a relatively short space of time, not to mention get up close to the stars of the exhibition.”
Since the launch of Community at Heart in 2009, SSE employees have dedicated over 24,000 days (the equivalent of 194,000 hours) to thousands of deserving projects right across Scotland, England, Ireland and Wales.
If you have a project that needs a helping hand from SSE volunteers, find out more on the employee volunteering page of our website.
To find out more about Marwell Zoo’s Rise of the Dinosaurs exhibition visit www.marwell.org.uk