Sustainability and organisational responsibility

EDUCATION AND PUBLIC ENGAGEMENT

Photo: Guided tour of Runnymede Memorial, as part of South Asian Heritage Month.

Our objective is to make sure that our sites – from individual scattered graves to cemeteries and memorials – are visited and explored as a permanent part of local and national heritage across the world.

Today, over a century after we first began, our work continues through our colleagues, supporters and volunteers who preserve our unique cultural, horticultural and architectural heritage and ensure that the stories of those who died in the World Wars are told.

We aim to engage new audiences and find innovative ways to involve the whole community with our work – through education and outreach, voluntary activity, arts and heritage projects, local research and partnership working. We aim to increase awareness of CWGC sites.   

Book A Talk or Tour Ypres battlefield tours and sites to visit - guide New tour of Tyne Cot available of visually impaired visitors World War resources for school visits - Worldwide Explore CWGC sites through augmented reality

The Speaker and Tour Programmes aim to connect with schools, colleges, universities as well as many other social and community groups to explain our work and share the stories of the men and women that we commemorate.

Our Public Engagement Co-ordinators work with a network of volunteer speakers to offer a series of free talks and tours, on the CWGC covering from our history to the horticulture of our sites.

See our current talks and tours The Commonwealth War Graves Guides Programme

LEARNING RESOURCES

Photo: School group on cemetery tour.

The CWGC provides high-quality resources for all ages. We bring together tools, teaching aids, cemetery guides and interpretative material that supports the community in exploring their local CWGC heritage. Find education resources in different languages for use in the classroom, in a cemetery or on battlefield visits, as well as guidance and aids to family historians.

We publish free information leaflets illustrating aspects of our work and major war cemeteries and memorials. The Commission also has publications available for purchase.

See our learning resources

PUBLIC ENGAGEMENT

Photo: Eyes On, Hands On volunteers meet up and training event.

Across the world, we work with volunteers, schools and education networks; universities and community organisations; heritage organisations; local governments.  We support our international colleagues with engagement and connecting communities in this shared, global heritage.

We actively develop relationships and partnership projects that promote increased awareness of our work. We work to increase visitor numbers to our sites and support communities in the exploration of their World Wars history at a local level and in an international context.

We are building a local, community engagement infrastructure with your help. We are connecting with people and places, and reconnecting neighbourhoods with the First World War and Second World War stories held within their local cemeteries. Volunteer champions, researchers and partner organisations are working with us to tell the stories of their local war graves and cemeteries.

View our public engagement programmes

Learning and development in CWGC

We work constantly towards a culture of continuous learning and development.

Our strategy, ‘Towards 2039’ gives us the ambition to be a global leader in commemoration.  Within that is our strategic priority of ‘organisational fitness’, which includes appreciating and recognising individuals’ innovation and taking the initiative.  This is also celebrated in our annual awards ceremony, celebrating individuals’ and teams’ achievements in line with our values.  

Professional development is an important part of growing colleagues’ knowledge and skills in a changing world.  We have introduced a certified horticulture diploma for our gardeners in addition to coaching and mentoring, training courses and support for external qualifications.

Since 2016, we have a career development programme for the works department to develop new joiners, including newly graduated colleagues, to offer them opportunities to grow.

Photo: Unveiling 'Lighting their Legacy' at Horse Guards Parade, London.

We are global leaders in commemoration, whose reputation for excellence is dependent upon our ability to attract, develop and retain a skilled and motivated group of people – be they directly employed staff, volunteers, or contractors.

CWGC can only succeed in that mission by becoming an employer of choice that ensures our most valuable asset, our colleagues, join well, serve well and leave well. 

By putting our people first – attracting, developing and retaining talented, motivated teams – our colleagues, our volunteers and our contractors will be part of a just, innovative & inclusive culture that helps people to be the best they can be.

We have over 1,300 colleagues who are employed in 39 countries and our responsibilities take us into 153 countries and territories.  Between us, we speak 200 languages. We strive to bridge language barriers, while appreciating the richness of other languages. 

Inevitably, communicating with, and treating such a globally diverse workforce fairly and in line with best practice can be challenging. Cultural and societal norms in some countries must be managed to ensure our people are treated equitably, fairly and go home safe to their families at the end of their working day.

As a bare minimum, we ensure we comply with all national regulations, including those for employment: often we choose to exceed those minimum standards.  For example, in countries with weak employment rights, we apply policies that are familiar to UK colleagues such as sick pay and the right to representation.  

We aspire to be an employer of choice and to treat all those who work for or with us fairly, consistently and well, wherever they live and work. 

Our ‘Fairness at Work’ policy outlines our standards, including in relation to a safe working environment and fair employment terms.

We have established systems to ensure our colleagues feel secure and supported, especially in times of adversity or conflict. 

We support the well-being of our colleagues, including via external mental health services, which are available to colleagues should they feel the need for support.  

We promote flexible work arrangements, support remote working options and offer adaptable work schedules and leave provisions to accommodate personal and family needs.

We provide our colleagues with medical support where required to ensure access to medical treatments and emergency care. 

We are acutely aware of the challenges faced by colleagues who may work near or in conflict zones, and we provide focused support to these individuals, working always with their safety and security in mind.  

We believe in standing together and supporting each other through all challenges. Our commitment to our colleagues’ wellbeing remains unwavering, and we will continue to provide the necessary resources and support to navigate these difficult times.

We have in place our CARE Values, with each of the letters that form this word representing a value.  We are Committed to putting our people first. We have the Ambition to be an employer of choice. We treat everyone with Respect. We strive for Excellence – for ourselves and for our organisation.

Our CARE Values are not just words on a page; they reflect and set our culture, and are lived and breathed as shared expectations, behaviours, and standards. Commitment; Ambition; Respect; Excellence.  We embed these values across our organisation and operations, and we have the same expectations of third parties working for, or with us, which we embed via Supplier Code of Conduct.

OUR CULTURE 

Photo: Celebrating our successes.

We have a positive, open, and inclusive culture which:

• requires and enables us to work safely,  
• embraces, enriches, and encourages us, 
• recognises and appreciates all of us as diverse individuals, valued colleagues, and contributing team members,   
• supports and enables us to be the best that we can be, in all that we do; and
  is fair, reasonable, appropriate, and just.

We Are a Team

We cherish and relish working together. We are active and engaged, and we involve each other.  We respect, care for, and help each other to shine and to succeed.    

We Communicate 

Openly, often, and proactively, we share what we know to maximise our contribution and our collective effectiveness.

Our Commitment

We have a commitment to encourage colleagues to speak up if they have any concerns about our organisation, our operations, or about those who work for or with us.  

We take our health and safety responsibilities extremely seriously with training and incident reporting at the forefront of our efforts to ensure people go home to their families unharmed. 

In Essence . . .

We value innovation; we value evidence-based decision making; we believe everyone should feel empowered, valued, informed, and included. 

We invest in the recruitment, induction, retention, and development of our people. In turn, our people will be our ambassadors and our champions – highly engaged and always striving to innovate and improve in the delivery of our Mission.

We are a truly talented, diverse, and inclusive global community of colleagues, of many languages and nationalities and we take great pride, individually and collectively, in our Mission.  

As custodians of this great institution, it is incumbent on us all to care for each other and our Mission, and to lead by example. 

We work with confidence, positivity, and trust, and strive each day to leave things a little better than we found them.  

CWGC AND THE COMMUNITY

With so many teams spread far across the world, we recognise we also play a role in local communities.  We are proud that some staff are the second or third generation of their family to work for us.

We are well aware of our connection to the local communities.  For several years now, we have been working with organisations that employ people with disabilities. In Belgium, these organisations are a fully-fledged part of society and industry. By partnering with such organisations, we have the benefits both of much-needed support in busy periods, and of knowing that vulnerable people are being offered suitable work under careful supervision.

OUR WORK CONTINUES

Photo: The Zomba Memorial, commemorating the fallen of the Malawi King's African Rifles. 

Our five-year programme to address historical inequalities in commemoration after the World Wars is well underway. The CWGC Non-Commemoration Programme has a clear mandate: to ensure all those who died in the world wars, no matter where they were, where they died or how they died are remembered equally.

Our historians work with global and state archive materials to direct their research. This allows us to yield important information – we can identify missing names, understand casualty numbers, and identify likely burial locations, as well as reinstate abandoned graves.  

“We have also started to break new ground in projects elsewhere across the globe. The main themes of this research remain unchanged, so the team’s efforts are directed towards gaining a greater understanding of casualty numbers, the whereabouts of missing burials and, of course, the existence of missing names from our sites and records.” Dr George Hay, Official Historian.

Download our 2023/2024 annual report

Read our latest progress update

Our operations experts, heritage managers and community engagement experts in countries then consult with local communities, governments, institutions, architects, and global heritage experts on the most appropriate form of commemoration. We have conducted many conservation projects in cooperation with, for instance, with local governments, architects, and engineering historians.

Meet the members of the CWGC Non-Commemoration global advisory panel

We work with architects, landscape and heritage experts, who enable us to create new memorials for what is our largest piece of work since the Second World War. Every name we recover is a person no longer forgotten, every community and stakeholder engaged with goes some way to righting a historical wrong, and combined these important programmes ensure all those who lost their lives serving the Commonwealth in the First and Second War are equally remembered. 

OUTREACH

Photo: Visit to Kariokor with Nairobi City County and community groups and the Right Honourable David Lammy, to discuss site development for our mutual benefit

Community engagement and projects to help build the legacy to the fallen.

Discover our outreach

Throughout the programme we have assembled groups of external and internal experts – architects, anthropologists, archaeologists, heritage experts and historians. Together we share best practice, discuss methodologies and approaches in searches for sites – as well as make real progress in finding oral histories and delivering community collaborations.

Left Behind Animation

Left Behind is a two-minute short, animated sequence made in partnership with recent graduates from the Central St Martin's Graphic Communication Design programme and design students at The Technical University of Kenya in Nairobi.

Our shared aim was simple – to help young people understand the often-untold stories of the 1 million African people who became porters, labourers and soldiers for the British and imperial forces ahead of the First World War. The creative team worked with our historians, experts and the wider CWGC Non-Commemoration Programme team to co-create a piece of content to help build messaging around the global nature of the First World War.

Find out more about our Non-Commemoration Project

Watch in English Watch in Swahili

Our public engagement programmes ensure the entire context of the World Wars is carefully explained and told to all generations, at our site tours, in schools, clubs, and voluntary organisations. The education materials at all our sites in countries affected by non-commemoration offer young people the chance to understand the historical inequalities that took place.

Our education resources enable your students to learn about the history of our sites, explore the scale of the 'World Wars' and the stories of those who came from across the globe to serve.

Access our school visit resources See all of our Education Resources.

FITTING MEMORIALS

Ensuring remembrance is both fitting and relevant to communities.

Learn about fitting memorials

RESEARCH OUTPUTS

See our published Non-Commemoration research reports.

Published research outputs

SUSTAINABILITY

Photo: One of our new electric vehicles in our Belgian fleet.

The key environmental concerns of our time are climate change and the widespread loss of biodiversity. Both of these global environmental challenges are the result of over-consumption of natural resources, the waste generated and its release into the environment.

To reflect these concerns, our key sustainability drivers encompass the following three principal themes -

• Combating climate change
• Protecting biodiversity
• Promoting a circular economy

The CWGC has committed to a net-zero greenhouse gas (GHG) emission target by 2050 and is committed to reducing GHG emissions in line with climate science, as part of the global effort to prevent the most dangerous consequences of climate change by limiting global warming to 1.5°C.

Our Sustainability Commitments

By the end of FY 23/24, we had switched 25% of our electricity supplies to renewable electricity tariffs and had installed 15 photovoltaic systems and 5 solar thermal systems to support in-house renewable energy generation. Our aim is to transition to 100% renewable electricity by 2031, though this is dependent on availability in the country where any sites are located.  

We have incorporated electric cars into our fleets in France, Belgium and at our UK Head Office, together with the installation of on-site charging points. We have also introduced the first electric van into our UK operations. As well as encouraging the use of electrically powered machinery and tools across the Commission, we are engaging with selected machinery suppliers to promote the further development of electrically powered machinery.

We have introduced a range of measures to help reduce energy consumption, such as converting to LED lighting, commencing a programme of energy-efficiency audits across offices and base sites and providing eco-driving training for all fleet drivers.

We continue to record extreme weather events across our estate, to improve our understanding of current and future climate change impacts and risks. To improve the resilience of our estate, we now require the design of new horticultural and structural projects to take into consideration the risks presented by changing climatic conditions. Our conservation approach, when undertaking restoration projects, is to repair only what is required and to emphasise the recuperation of materials such as natural stone.

To enhance the carbon dioxide absorption potential of our estate, we are reviewing the potential for tree planting, referencing our original layouts but taking a fresh view. We are setting ambitious targets globally for new tree planting.

PROTECTING BIODIVERSITY

Photo: Extensive wildflower zones and newly planted trees at Loos British Cemetery Extension)

We have committed to progressively enhancing the biodiversity potential of our estate. One of the ways in which we are achieving this is through the introduction of a greater range of habitats on our sites, such as zones of longer grass and wildflowers, and creation of habitat for vertebrate and invertebrate species.

Our usage of pesticides, herbicides and biocides, and chemical fertilisers has been significantly reduced, driven by a move to more Integrated Pest and Weed Management approaches and legislative changes across Europe. Our efforts on this front will continue as we seek to reduce usage to minimal levels across our estate. As part of this effort, we have expanded the use of an enzyme-based, headstone cleaning product to additional regions, to support the continued phase-out of biocides. This will mean headstones will have a more natural look, as originally intended by the IWGC.

Environmental Sustainability & The CWGC

PROMOTING A CIRCULAR ECONOMY

Photo: Biodegradable wreaths available at our Ieper Visitor Centre.

As part of promoting a circular economy, we are seeking to reduce resource consumption and reduce waste generation. For example, to assist with reducing water consumption, we have been rolling-out a smart software system that will enable us to better optimise and track the water consumed by our irrigation systems. We are closely monitoring our water consumption and setting targets for reduction, and reviewing the horticultural layout of sites to significantly reduce the irrigation need.

Aligned with the principles of a circular economy, we have developed and introduced a new biodegradable willow wreath in Ieper, Belgium which is available for purchase. When this wreath starts to fade, it can be taken to our compost farm to generate compost that will be used within our cemeteries. We are producing templates for biodegradable wreaths for all ceremonial events.

As part of efforts to reduce waste generation, we are optimising arrangements for the segregation, re-use and recycling of waste at all office and base sites.

Horticulture and garden war cemeteries

Sustainable headstone care

We especially encourage employee engagement, setting up green teams across our estate, harnessing their local knowledge to develop initiatives tailored to their area.

We are a worldwide organisation, but we operate at a local level and new developments are constantly taking place as we transition to more sustainable ways of working.  We aim to post updates on how our teams around the world are identifying and implementing changes to help meet both local needs and overall goals. We are also guided by our global Conservation Policies for the care of our estate which set out how we conserve and manage our built heritage and horticulture, managing change carefully and sensitively in line with best practice.

Our conservation approach is to repair only what is necessary and to avoid renovation if possible. We maximise the retention of original materials and recuperate most of our natural stone and brickwork. 
In the words of our founder Fabian Ware, we are ‘growing old gracefully’ and as we grow, we change and adapt. The CWGC is over 100 years old; and any changes we make are measured and carefully thought out to meet a changing environment our founder could not have envisaged. 

Whatever we do, our mission remains the same:  to honour those who lost their lives in both World Wars.

See how we care for our headstones

Download the CWGC Environmental Sustainability Report 2022

Download the CWGC Environmental Sustainability Report 2023

Download the latest CWGC Environmental Sustainability Report 2024

HUMAN COST OF WAR 

Our ambition is to be a global leader in commemoration for all time; we aim to ensure all Commonwealth casualties that died in WWI and WWII are identified and commemorated appropriately.  

Core to our mission is the warning of the human cost of war.  Seeing the names of individuals on headstones and additional information on their lives on our website, including For Evermore (For Evermore: Stories of the Fallen) brings home that those who died were family members and part of a community, not mere statistics.

Photo: VJ Strudwick, died aged 15 and buried at Essex Farm Cemetery, one of our youngest casualties.

Working with other commemoration organisations, our reciprocal agreements (that are loosely enforced) ensure that many more individuals are commemorated appropriately, including casualties of non-Commonwealth allies as well as former adversaries.  

Photo: Polish and Commonwealth headstones, Gaza War Cemetery, Feb 2023

UNESCO conferred 139 WW1 war cemeteries and memorials in Belgium and Northern France – along the former Western Front – as World Heritage Status sites, “places of reconciliation, contemplation and peaceful reflection” (UNESCO Press Release, 2023), of which 51 are built and maintained by the CWGC.

CWGC France & Belgium sites awarded UNESCO status

Central to our mission is equality of commemoration.  Where possible, we honour individuals taking care to identify each casualty with headstone inscriptions in keeping with family’s wishes.

Equality in our commemoration processes

We use the same headstones for all, irrespective of rank.  We strive hard to ensure headstones or memorials in all parts of the world are treated with the same importance.  Inscriptions will indicate with whom they served and the religion of the casualty. Families were consulted on what words they wanted engraved on the headstone. On our sites we have a diverse group of headstones from many different countries all over world also from non-commonwealth countries including German headstones, all treated in the same way.

Not all war casualties were combatants - many played a crucial role in supporting units such as porters, carriers and labourers. They too are remembered. 

Commemorating the Chinese Labour Corps 

Giza Memorial | Cemetery Details

The end of the First World War in Africa

OUR GOVERNANCE

Much of our funding is provided by our six member nations: Australia; Canada; New Zealand; South Africa; India; and the UK.  Our governance is provided by commissioners from each of these nations, representatives from each of the armed forces, and executives from industry and public service.  They provide accountability to ensure we are meeting our objectives and provide oversight, expertise, and guidance.

Our Commissioners: Commonwealth War Graves Commission

Photo: HRH The Princess Royal, our President, visits our Headquarters in Maidenhead.

We apply the highest standards to ourselves, across the world.  Our policies on bribery and corruption, anti-slavery and financial mismanagement apply to all countries that we work in, and to all colleagues and external stakeholders.  We do not engage with corrupt practices, ensuring we follow national law as a minimum.  In many of our practices, including health and safety, and human resources, we apply as a minimum the standards you would find in countries such as the UK.

We have a Supplier Code of Conduct in place and are committed to working only with suppliers who share our values and commitments around responsible and sustainable consumption and production and have the same standards and expectations of their own third parties. We have translated our Supplier Code of Conduct into multiple languages to ensure accessibility and understanding by our global supply chain.

Supplier Code of Conduct

TRANSPARENCY

Our annual report and other communications provide transparency and accountability to our member governments.

Download our 2023/24 Annual Report

Our data on WWI and WWII casualties are one of the crown jewels of our organisation.  We take great care in identifying casualties and are rigorous in ensuring the information is correct.  

STRONG INSTITUTION

Our strategy, delivered against our ambition to be a global leader in commemoration, means that, in the words of our Royal Charter, we perpetuate the memory of those we commemorate and strengthen the bonds of union between all people. 

Our priorities, for the next twenty years, have been crafted following long and collaborative consultation.  They provide a road map to help us look critically at what we do, who we do it for, how we do it, and what else we might do to ensure our longevity, and our place in the landscape of global commemoration.

Our 'Strategy Towards 2039’ addresses the core challenges of a more uncertain world including:

• the return of armed conflict to the European continent and elsewhere; 
• the impact of rampant inflation; 
• coming to terms with the fact that we may have done permanent harm to our climate and ecosystems.

Although 2039 might seem an age away, the strategy, as we look ahead to the centenaries of the Second World War, provides a realistic focus and timescale for us to work to.