LIV North: Donates Outdated Service Vehicles to Homeless Cars

When 14 of LIV North’s service vehicles commercial lives came to an end the leadership team knew they had a useful purpose for someone.

So the leadership team at LIV North coordinated a donation to Homeless Cars, a Canadian charitable foundation that accepts used vehicles and donates the proceeds of their sale to food banks and local food shelters. 

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CertaPro: Company Painter Provides Food and Necessities to Those in Need in El Salvador

We love sharing stories of how our team members find their own Social Purpose.  Efrain Montoya,  a painter with CertaPro in Thousand Oaks, CA, wanted to help those in need in El Salvador. Efrain, whose brother lives there, has been collecting monetary donations here in the United States and and sending the money to his brother in El Salvador. His brother uses the money to buy groceries and other essentials for those in need. Many of the people they help are extremely impoverished, living in shacks in rural areas with no easy access or means to obtain food or other supplies.

Kudos to Efrain and his brother for identifying a way they can help people and putting together a plan to make a difference in their lives.

 Many of the supply deliveries have been recorded, and can be viewed below.

 

Super Restoration: Working Together to Feed 307 Starving Children for an Entire Year

It was all hands on deck on Saturday, November 23, 2019 when more than 528 volunteers came together to pack 112,104 meals to feed 307 starving children throughout the world for an entire year! 

In addition to the food packed, the team raised more than $30,000 to help fund the noble work of Feed My Starving Children.

“Dear Super Restoration team – THANK YOU! You are all such champions for putting on this event for your community,” said Bethany Durst, Feed My Starving Children eemployee. “It was wonderful serving with you all. This was one of the most efficient packs I’ve done because of your hard prep work. I hope our paths cross again soon!”

This event is meaningful to so many at Super Restoration who demonstrate a commitment to #FirstServeOthers through many activities throughout the year. 

 “This was my second year coordinating the Feed My Starving Children Event to be hosted at Super Restoration. I began working on this year’s event in July 2019. This year, I was able to create and organize more efficiently because I had experience under my belt. It was so amazing to see a lot of hard work and effort come together on the event day,” said Jamie O’Camb, executive assistant to Rene Vargas. ‘When I saw all of the volunteers in our warehouse, it made me so proud to be part of a company that sees the value in giving back to our community. It was such a blessing to meet all of the genuine people and families who took time out of their weekend to help people around the world. Once again, this event made such an impact on me and will be something I continue to support and work on for the years to come!”  

Congrats to the Super Restoration team on an incredibly successful and meaningful event!

Paul Davis: Supporting Local Food Pantries through a Creative CAN Challenge Food Drive

Donation drives are a popular and effective way to collect much-needed food for area food banks, but if you really want to engage your team members and make your food drive something everyone will be talking about, give them an added challenge to see what can be built with the donated items. That’s exactly what the creative Social Purpose Champions at Paul Davis did, and the results were incredible!

Building for Prizes & Bragging Rights

As you’ll see from the pictures in this post, team members took the challenge seriously and unleashed their creativity building fabulous structures out of donated canned goods. Photos of the structures were shared with the Paul Davis network and prizes were awarded for the locations with the Most Votes and the Most Cans.

All food collected was donated to local and human food pantries, many of which are in great need during summer months. Lots of companies organize food drives during the holiday season, which is  helpful, but by the time summer rolls around, many food banks are faced with empty shelves.

Hunger Bites won the award for Most Votes

More than 1,180 cans were used to build the Animal House structure

A Fun Challenge with a Big Impact

In addition to highly coveted bragging rights, the LLCO Animal House structure won in the Most Cans category with 1,188 cans, and Hunger Bites won Most Votes. Some offices took the challenge even further by incorporating other fun team building events including company BBQs and bowling outings. Collectively the challenge netted more than 3,100 cans of food!

“Words cannot express my gratitude, respect, and appreciation to everyone involved in this event,” said Quality Assurance Analyst Waleska Gonzalez. “Helping others when they need it the most is a cause I keep close to my heart and I am always looking for an opportunity to create awareness. I was happy to see the passion and commitment from my PD family.”

The PDR Jacksonville team created a unique cat structure using their cans

The team behind the Strike Out Hunger display continued their theme with an employee bowling party

Paul Davis Talent and Change Leader and JASMYN Volunteer Kali Freeland added, “At PDRI in Jacksonville, we donated the cans from our structure to a local LGBT Youth Crisis Center, JASMYN. JASMYN normally receives donations during the winter months, so they were especially grateful for Summer donations. I’m personally very proud to support this organization and I’m grateful that Paul Davis is embracing Social Purpose as well as Inclusion and Diversity!”  

Add Some Creativity to Your Next Food Drive

So if you are looking to give your next food drive an added element of team building and fun, consider issuing a “CAN challenge” to your team members.

FirstService Residential: Providing Nutritious Meals to Those with Serious Illnesses

Philly-area high-rise associates teamed up with MANNA to provide healthy meals to those suffering from serious illnesses. The team spent the day cooking, preparing and packaging meals and were even joined by residents of other FirstService Residential-managed communities.  

FirstService Residential: Lending a Hand to Feed My Starving Children

Super Restoration: Helping Prepare 124,416 Meals for Those in Need

Super Restoration helped assemble a team of 650 volunteers who spent a weekend preparing an astounding 124,416 meals for hungry children around the world during a recent mobile pack event for Feed My Starving Children. This was the company’s third year participating in this worthwhile event.

 “This was my first year being a part of a Feed My Starving Children event. I took on the role as the event coordinator and began working on this project back in August 2018,” said Jamie O’Camb, executive assistant to Rene Vargas (CEO). “After all the hard work was done and everything was ready to go, I couldn’t believe the event day was finally here. That morning, I made my way to the back to see all the people packing the meals. It truly brought tears to my eyes to see such genuine people and families, taking time out of their weekend to pack meals for starving children. This was something that made a huge impact on me and I will continue to support this cause for a very long time.”

In addition to packing meals, the team also helped raise $30,000 for this worthy cause.

Feed My Starving Children Event Supervisor Louis Hintz acknowledged the team’s hard work by saying, “Thank you so much for an amazing event. Thank you all for having a heart for the precious kids that we feed day in and day out. We had a great time working with you all this weekend and appreciate all the hard work you put into this event! The core team, volunteers and everyone else were all incredible. Thanks again!”

FirstService Corporation: Providing Needed Funds to Ensure Students Receive Healthy Meals

At FirstService’s Toronto office, the Social Responsibility Committee is always looking for ways the team can positively impact its community. Child poverty is a growing problem, and many children do not receive adequate nutrition as a result.  Through a series of “Breakfast Club” fundraisers, the team raised $1,960 to fund Student Nutrition Programs in the Toronto area.  For every $100 raised, 70 children will receive a hot and healthy breakfast. 100% of the donations collected by the team went directly into these programs.

“Food security is something many of us take for granted. For kids, having access to nutritious meals affects their ability to focus and learn in school,” said Erica Foster, senior manager, accounting and part of FirstService’s Social Responsibility Committee. “Toronto Foundation for Student Success’ mission to help students succeed by providing meals is something that resonated to many of us and we wanted to do our part to help ensure no child in Toronto begins the school day hungry.”

 

American Pool: Helping Improve Food Security for Families in Need in Long Island

FirstService Corporation: Harvesting Produce to #FirstServeOthers

August 23, 2018, was back-to-school day for 20 FirstService Corporation employees who visited the Bendale Business Technical Institute (Bendale BTI) campus. But instead of carrying backpacks and laptops, volunteers donned gardening gloves and garden tools. This back-to-school day was different than most. On this day, the team volunteered to tend to the vegetable gardens at Bendale BTI as part of a community service initiative to support FoodShare Toronto, a non-profit organization established in 1985 whose mission is to partner with communities and schools to deliver healthy food and education.

FoodShare’s School Grown is an innovative schoolyard farming project, where fruits and vegetables are grown on school lawns and rooftops to create student employment. Students learn it all – from seeding to weeding, to harvesting produce and running their own farmers markets twice a week in two locations in the City of Toronto, Borden Farmers Market and East Lynn Farmers Market.

School Grown produce is shared with students, sold to the public at local farmers markets and donated to food share programs to support the culinary classes and lunches at Bendale BTI and Eastdale CI.

Bendale BTI launched its garden on a ¼ acre of school lawn in 2010. In addition to learning horticulture, students get to harvest and cook garden-grown produce, helping them to establish healthy eating habits and lifelong skills. The results of the program have been impressive.

• 30 School Grown youth employed in 2017
• 37,913 lbs of food harvested from School Grown gardens
• $203,641 paid out in youth wages to date

During the summer months student employees are off for summer break so volunteers are needed to help tend the gardens. The FirstService team was looking for a teambuilding event which included a community service component as part of its #FirstServeOthers initiative, and that could accommodate 20 volunteers — which can be a challenge to find. FoodShare Toronto was a perfect fit.

Orlando Martin Lopez Gomez, Bendale BTI’s Urban Agriculture Manager, educated participants about the program and the varieties of produce grown on-site. He divided the group into teams who were each tasked with different duties including weeding and tending to the tomato plants. Before long they got to dig in and begin the rewarding task of harvesting fresh produce. Turnips, radishes, tomatoes, and beans were all harvested, cleaned and packed – ready to be taken to the farmers market for sale. Along the way, volunteers got to sample a wide range of organic produce including colorful and sweet tomatoes, kale, peppery arugula, spicy radishes, several varieties of lettuce and even raw okra.

“When planning our event, we looked at a number of different volunteer opportunities and were intrigued when we learned about FoodShare Toronto,” said Michael Smith, who works as a strategy and corporate development analyst and was part of the event planning team. “Most of us spend our days behind desks working on computers so to have the opportunity to get outdoors, roll up our sleeves and dig in was a great change of pace. Because students were off for the summer, the gardens needed some TLC and we were able to make an immediate impact, which was extremely rewarding.”

This was an eye-opening experience for many who had no idea such urban farms existed in the city, and certainly not on school grounds. For more information about the wide array of programs offered by FoodShare Toronto please visit www.foodshare.net.