Of all Business in the Community’s programmes, Seeing is Believing has done most to convert business leaders to practical action. The idea behind it so simple that some observers might question its necessity.

It is to persuade groups of senior business representatives to spend a day visiting local communities and discovering opportunities for corporate support. Do business decision-makers really know so little about the harder side of life in inner city areas, where many of their employees and customers live, that they need to be taken on organised outings to experience it at first hand? The answer is that they do.

Senior managers, in common with many of their staff, can easily spend entire careers commuting from the suburbs to city centre offices without setting foot in the districts they journey through each day.

Seeing is Believing, currently celebrating its tenth anniversary, has from the outset enjoyed the active encouragement of the Prince of Wales. As BITC’s president he receives regular reports on visits, and has taken part in many of them personally. The project has proved capable of provoking strikingly powerful responses.

A visit to Cheltenham and Gloucester might appear an improbable equivalent of the Damascus road. But in 1997 David Varney, then chief executive of BG, came away from touring three local estates places that do not conform to Gloucestershire’s overall image of pristine affluence speaking of his shock, anger, and “the need for business to be acceptable in a broader community than just the stock market”.

Mr Varney was angry with the public authorities for their lack of action and co-ordination in addressing many of the estates’ pressing needs. But he was also angry with himself because, he recognised, there were many simple problems that BG could be helping to solve but was not.

His immediate response was to pledge support to the community leaders he met in Cheltenham and Gloucester. But the visit also had a far wider effect, with the establishment of BG Foundation, through which all the company’s community support is channelled, and a deepening sense of social involvement throughout the organisation. Mr Varney is now chairman of MM02, British Telecommunications’ demerged wireless business, where he remains committed to promoting appropriate community involvement.

Some Seeing is Believing visits have led to the establishment of relationships between businesses and local communities that have endured and strengthened over a number of years. One example is the powerful private sector support for partnership action that has helped regenerate Balsall Heath, Birmingham’s former red light district.

Others have, from local beginnings, become national programmes. A visit by business representatives to two inner city schools in north London proved the starting point for Partners in Leadership, a professional development programme for headteachers.

This scheme pairs headteachers and business people, initially for a year, to work together on leadership and management issues. David Hart, general secretary of the National Association of Headteachers, which works with BITC to deliver Partners in Leadership, says it has “rapidly made itself an indispensable part of the education scene.”

There are now 4,000 partnerships established, and the project forms part of the government’s leadership programme for serving headteachers – an example of the way Seeing is Believing schemes can, from small beginnings, become adopted as part of national public policy.

But business people who have taken part in Partners in Leadership emphasise that it is not about the one-way transmission of private sector ideas into schools. Many managers have commented on how witnessing the complexities of running a school offers valuable lessons for their own businesses.

Another project currently expanding across the country is Right to Read, which was pioneered in the Yorkshire and Humber region. A Seeing is Believing visit to Sheffield in 1998 led a group of business leaders to agree to work together to make an impact on a significant economic and social issue.

They chose literacy and Right to Read, which recruits volunteers from business and the wider community to give 7-11 year olds one-to-one reading experience, was the result.

In the Yorkshire and Humber region Right to Read has involved 40,000 children, 500 schools and 3,000 volunteers. As well as expanding nationally, the scheme is being examined with a view to incorporating writing alongside reading.

The Yorkshire Post, Yorkshire Television and Yorkshire Water, the three companies that worked to establish Right to Read after the initial Seeing is Believing visit had their contribution recognised in this year’s BITC awards for excellence.