We believe that it is important to give back to the communities in which we live and operate. Our community ethos is aligned with our business Purpose and Values, in particular, our Relationships and Enjoyment Values. Our Community pillar focuses on:

• Community Activities
• Community Employment
• Community Donations

Community Activities

We encourage our employees to engage in community activities, in particular, volunteering in the fields of animal welfare, human service and environmental stewardship. There is a particular focus on animal welfare driven by the passion of our employees. We have committed to giving our employees one day per year in the community. A lot of our community activities this year have been postponed due to the social distancing restrictions imposed by COVID-19. Fortunately, our employees in North America held six events earlier in the year, volunteering a total of 935 hours. Two of the events were held during North America's annual sales meeting, where over 100 volunteers arrived a day early for the week long meeting to give back to the local community that would host them. Four of the six events were focused on animal welfare, primarily supporting animal shelters, while one was a large-scale beach clean-up preserving our environment, and another serving local grade school children interested in science. In preparation for expanding volunteerism globally at Dechra, a Volunteer Service Tool Kit was developed and is now available to all Dechra employees for the purpose of encouraging and instructing how to properly engage their community and organise a volunteer event.

We also support professional staff volunteering time in their local community. Andrea Brownstein, US Territory Sales Manager volunteered with the National Disaster Medical System (NDMS), deployed earlier this year to help COVID-19 positive Wuhan evacuees at the start of the pandemic.

Community Employment

We recognise that the Group has a responsibility to its stakeholders and we strive to contribute to the social and economic welfare of the local communities in which we operate. We recognise that by taking voluntary action in this area, it is helping to protect and develop our business:

• Offer employment opportunities to all sectors of the community through non-discriminatory policies and promoting opportunities to disadvantaged and vulnerable groups; and
• Support local initiatives for the development and education of young people in the areas we serve, such as Dechra product development staff located in the Maine office educating and exciting our next generation of scientists during the annual Bioscience Day for Maine grade school students.

Community Donations

For the last 9 years we have operated a Group Donations scheme, whereby we encourage all employees to nominate a charity or non-commercial organisation for a charitable donation. This year we donated to 15 charities each receiving £2,000 each. In addition to the annual Group Donations, each business unit has the discretion to allocate funds and/or products to local community charities and/or animal welfare charities. The majority of product donations are short dated product which otherwise would have had to be destroyed.