TINA ROCHE - Business In The Community Ireland

WORDS: LIV MORGAN

Tina Roche describes herself as lucky. It isn’t that Tina, CEO of The Foundations for Investing in Communities, has had a particularly hard life but she doesn’t take her life for granted. Nor does she take luxuries such as running water, a roof over her head and a wage in her pocket as a given. Tina is the kind of interviewee that makes you ask yourself ‘what more could
I be doing?’ after you cross her path.

“I hate injustice and prejudice. I can’t bear to hear people talk about our new communities with this all-knowing ‘Oh they’re getting loads of money from the State’. That’s utter rubbish. I don’t allow my blood to boil over it but I’ll answer to them.” This fighting tone is unexpected from the woman sitting in front of me, she exudes compassion and has a quick but sincere smile. Yet it’s easy to see that behind Tina's exterior is a driven and determined businesswoman.

As CEO of The Foundations for Investing in Communities, Tina has no doubt as to what her job role entails. “I think it’s enabling others to have an impact. That’s what a CEO should

do — enable other staff to do what they’re capable of. Enable people to be leaders and encourage all of that.” Having taken up the position in January 2000 she has since established two organisations — Business in the Community Ireland (BITCI) and The Community Foundation for Ireland. She doesn’t look on her work as charitable: “We’re

like a change agent. We are a voluntary organisation and we are a charity but what we’re about is change. What we’re about in business is having a blue flag corporate Ireland.”

Tina is no stranger to giving back to her community, a trait that was instilled in her since childhood. “I’m the eldest of seven children and when we were growing up as soon as you could go down to the shops you were expected to call on neighbours to see if they wanted anything. When you returned my father would ask if you had called into somebody and if you said no the look of disappointment on his face would make you never say that again!”

Although community involvement plays a big part in CSR, a company should look to their business practices in the workplace too, according to Tina. BITCI has worked with big companies such as Marks & Spencer, An Post and Bank of Ireland. Currently there are 55 companies under BITCI’s wing, involved in its social inclusion programmes: Ready for Work (training, educating and employment of homeless), EPIC (Employment for people from immigrant communities) and Linkage (getting ex-offenders back into the workplace). “It’s not all sunshine. You don’t end up being homeless without there being issues and sometimes the issues are bigger and hard to cope with at that time. So some people might just flip after six months’ time and end up not having a job again but we keep trying and we place them twice, three times, four times... whatever it takes.”

Read more about Tina Roche in the October | November 2008 issue of WMB, on newstands now.