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In 1970, our founder Ove Arup, set out our ambition to do socially useful work by “joining hands with others fighting for the same values”. Today, as we approach the end of 2024, I want to say thank you to our clients and partners for joining us, and to our people at Arup for your ideas, technical excellence, and commitment to shaping a better world. I’m proud of our community engagement programme at Arup which reinforces this pledge to support the most disadvantaged and vulnerable communities and places across the globe. It also gives our staff the time to offer their professional and technical expertise to under-served communities, and it means that we reach people in places where our commercial projects might not take us. The impacts of climate change and the increase in armed conflict are affecting all communities, particularly those already vulnerable and marginalised. We focus our time, technical skills, and expertise on a diverse range of community projects that reduce inequities and give people access to resilient infrastructure, including essentials such as clean water, sanitation, affordable and reliable energy, better food security and shelter. For example, our partnerships to help tackle homelessness include providing our economic expertise to UK housing charity Shelter and assisting Colombian non-governmental organisation, Fundación Catalina Muñoz, with technical guidance to improve the architectural and structural conditions of its modular housing for vulnerable communities. In South Africa, we’re helping to improve the safety of informally occupied inner city buildings in Johannesburg with Architecture Sans Frontieres-UK and 1to1 – Agency of Engagement, and in the Rasulabad Informal Settlement in Surat, India we’re delivering climate resilience, adaptation, and infrastructure services as part of the Campaign For ROOH (Roof Over Our Heads). Homelessness devastates lives and drastically restricts the potential of people and communities as it is the nexus of many of the forces and inequalities in our society. We have seen, in our work in cities across the world, that we can find practical and effective solutions through our partnerships at neighbourhood, city and national levels. I’m proud of our collective efforts and I look forward to working together with our partners, communities and clients across the globe in 2025 to continue to grow our social impact. I wish you all the best over the holidays and festive season. #CommunityEngagement #WeAreArup Below are images from our partnerships with the Rasulabad Informal Settlement in Surat, India and Fundación Catalina Muñoz in Colombia.