Communities & Partnerships

2019 saw the one year anniversary of the launch of AIB Together, a Group-wide community programme. As well as a €2.4m financial investment into core partners FoodCloud and Soar, this programme offers two days per year for each of AIB’s employees to volunteer for local charities or community organisations. Through our AIB Together Funding commitment, we are backing our colleagues as they continue to raise funds for the charities that matter most to them. Since its inception, AIB employees have given over 8,000 hours of volunteering within local communities.

Our Communities

The AIB COVID-19 Research Hub

Trinity College Dublin and AIB have collaborated to establish a research hub to urgently accelerate the college’s immunology project tackling the COVID-19 pandemic. The AIB COVID-19 Research Hub, located within the Trinity Biomedical Sciences Institute, will play a critical role in the delivery of the Trinity COVID-19 Immunology Project. The hub will involve immunologists and infectious disease clinicians from St James’s Hospital in Dublin. Click here to find out more about the research hub.

FoodCloud

AIB has partnered with FoodCloud, a multiaward-winning social enterprise that enables the redistribution of surplus food from industry to the charity sector. FoodCloud has helped ensure 75 million meals have gone to people and not to waste; they now move more than 37 meals every minute of every day. With AIB’s support, FoodCloud have increased their impact by 160% since 2018, with the aim to double it by the end of 2020.

Click here to find out more about FoodCloud.

SOAR

Soar delivers early-intervention, preventative, character development wellness workshops for young people aged 12 to 18, from all backgrounds. Its school workshops aim to empower young people to thrive, believe in themselves and fulfil their potential. Soar has worked with over 38,000 young people since 2012, and over 14,000 teenagers have experienced a Soar workshop since the start of the AIB Together programme. AIB’s investment in Soar has resulted in a 60% increase in young people reached since the start of the partnership.

Click here to find more about Soar.

Youth and Education

Youth and Education is one of our core themes, and we enjoy partnerships with a variety of third-level institutions, including Dublin City University (DCU), University College Dublin (UCD) and Technological University Dublin (TUD). In Northern Ireland, AIB supports Graduate and Student of the Year awards in both the Ulster University and Queen’s University Belfast. AIB has partnered with Junior Achievement Ireland since its inception in 1996. Junior Achievement helps children of all ages understand the benefits of staying in education, and has worked with more than 3,000 volunteers to facilitate educational opportunities for more than 63,000 students.

GIY

AIB has signed up to partner with GIY in the GROW Circle in 2020. GIY is a not for profit social enterprise helping people to grow some of their own food at home, at work, at school and in the community. Each GROW Circle company investment will be uplifted by the Government of Ireland (via SIFI) to further scale GIY’s impact and help us to reach our goal of helping 4 million people grow, cook and eat food by 2025. Pioneering sustainability through food.

Click here to find out more about GIY.

GAA

We have partnered with the Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA), Ireland’s largest community organisation, in various guises for more than 30 years. Since 1991 we have sponsored the All-Ireland Club Championships and in 2015 we also became proud sponsors of the All Ireland Football Championship, giving us the opportunity to engage with the 1,700 GAA clubs and communities in Ireland all year round. We will continue to be the GAA’s main sponsor by up to the end of 2022. The partnership now incorporates: Title Sponsor of AIB GAA Club Championships in Hurling, Football and Camogie, across Junior, Intermediate and Senior levels; and sponsor of the Senior Football Championships.

Art and AIB

The AIB Art Collection began in 1980, acquiring works in order to preserve and support this key aspect of Ireland’s cultural heritage. From the outset, we wanted to build a representative collection, including works by Irish artists based at home and abroad and works by foreign artists operating in Ireland. For the past number of years, we have had an extensive art lending programme in place to make this important collection available to a wider audience. Artworks have been made available for public exhibition, in art galleries at home and abroad, and many State institutions.

Teagasc

Teagasc is the agricultural authority responsible for research and development, training and advisory services in the Irish agri-food sector. AIB and Teagasc have been in partnership for three years and have worked together on some innovative initiatives to help our agri customers such as ShedTalks, Teagasc Grass10 and The Book That Grew.