Three East London charities supporting the education of children, refugees and disadvantaged people have received donations totalling £8,000 from Amazon’s corporate office in Shoreditch.

The donations were made to Street Child, Code Your Future and Eastside Educational Trust.

Spitalfields-based Street Child works in over 20 countries across sub-Saharan Africa, Asia, the Middle East and Europe to help children access education. The charity seeks to see all children, particularly those in low resource environments, safe, in school and learning. Street Child received £2,000.

Code Your Future, which also received £2,000, offers training for refugees and disadvantaged people to become web developers. The charity helps trainees start careers in the tech industries with a 12-month vocational training programme.

Eastside Educational Trust aims to inspire the country’s most underserved young people through participation in arts programmes that develop their skills and creative thinking. The Shoreditch-based charity runs workshops and programmes for young people both in and outside of school and received £4,000 from Amazon.

The donation to Eastside Educational Trust will help fund Creativity Live, a programme of interactive creativity workshops available to classrooms across the country via live streaming technology.

Ankit Anand works at Amazon in Shoreditch as a business development manager, and he nominated the charity for the donation. He said:

“I sit on the board of Eastside Educational Trust, an outstanding youth arts charity that has been working with disadvantaged young people for the past 29 years. As a London resident, this is an extremely rewarding and fulfilling role to give back and invest in the future of my community and to provide a platform for young people to express themselves. I believe in Eastside’s vision to build a future in which all children and young people’s creativity is unlocked, nurtured and celebrated.

“Post-COVID, young people face daunting challenges, especially with cutbacks at school and increasing pressure to achieve high academic grades. Eastside’s workshops and programmes introduce young people to the world of the arts culture and creativity, giving them life changing opportunities they would not otherwise have.”

Matt Lane, CEO and Artistic Director at Eastside Educational Trust added:

“We would like to say a big thank you to Amazon for supporting us as we help young people develop their creative skills. We believe that the creativity of all children should be nurtured, and this donation will support us in doing that.”

The donation forms part of Amazon’s Volunteer Cash Donation Programme, where Amazon employees nominate local causes where they volunteer their time, to receive a cash donation from the company. In collaboration with hundreds of community organisations around the world, Amazon employees are encouraged to volunteer and support causes they’re passionate about.

Amazon supports the communities where it operates and has delivered free computer science and STEM education programmes to more than 700,000 students across the UK through Amazon Future Engineer.

Amazon helps community organisations transport meals and other essentials to families in need through its pro bono logistics programme, Amazon Local Good, including more than seven million healthy breakfasts to children at risk of hunger in partnership with Magic Breakfast. And through its Multibank initiative, co-founded with former UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown, Amazon has supported more than 200,000 families experiencing poverty, with the donation of more than 2 million surplus essential goods.

Amazon partners with Comic Relief to help people tackle poverty and is the official home of the charity’s iconic Red Nose. Together with its employees, customers, and partners, Amazon has raised over £4.8 million to fund projects that support people struggling with the cost-of-living crisis and tackle issues such as homelessness, mental health problems, and food insecurity across the UK, and around the world.