Volunteering & Community

Benevity, the global leader in workplace giving, volunteering and community investment software, announced the latest expansion of its industry-leading international offering. Benevity’s software platform and related services now provide companies with employees in India the ability to engage their people in local volunteering and tax-receiptable giving to Indian charities as part of an integrated approach to infusing a culture of purpose into global companies. This enhancement builds on their market-leading international giving solution, Benevity OneWorld™, which is delivered through Spark, an award-winning cloud-based software which is gaining rapid adoption across Fortune 1000 companies.

Building a world-class vehicle demands attention to detail, commitment and plenty of hard work. That same energy and passion is being applied by employees of the Mercedes-Benz plant in Alabama to our partnership with the not-for-profit organization "Habitat for Humanity". They are helping to build houses for homeless families in Alabama.

In the world of fighting hunger, innovation comes in many forms. It can come from a new use of technology—like our Stephen J. Brady Stop Hunger Scholar Jack Griffin, who developed an app that uses GPS to tell people in need where they can find a food bank. Other times, it can be using an old technology in a new way, such as using food trucks to create mobile kitchens that bring hot meals to people in need, a method employed by other Sodexo Stop Hunger Foundation grant recipients.

Many developing countries have lax vehicle safety standards. Around the world, road crashes kill an estimated 1.3 million people each year and injure up to 50 million. There, automakers — including U.S. and European companies — routinely sell cars without many of the basic safety protections that are standard here at home. Often, they are sold without airbags or electronic stability systems, and they are not capable of protecting passengers in crashes above 35 m.p.h. The result: An awful lot of people are being killed in crashes that, in the U.S. and Europe, they would likely survive.

The Living Product Challenge (LPC), introduced in 2015, is growing and scaling thanks to the commitment of courageous companies who are redesigning products and processes to work within natural and social systems, it was announced at Neocon World Trade Fair today. Neocon exhibitors Mohawk and Humanscale both debuted products created under the Living Product Challenge. Additionally, the International Living Future Institute (ILFI) announced partnerships with leading product certification companies, growing the ecosystem for companies who are exploring the outer edges of regenerative manufacturing and design.

In the months following 9/11, Karen Calder searched for a way to better serve her community. One day, she read a feasibility study about a new project called Classroom Central, a proposed nonprofit aimed at providing school supplies to children living in poverty. The study moved her to tears.

At the Tenth Annual Television Academy Honors on June 8, three programs from 21st Century Fox businesses were recognized for harnessing “the extraordinary power of television to advance social change.” The honorees included National Geographic’s Before the Flood, a documentary from Academy Award winners Leonardo DiCaprio and Fisher Stevens about the global effects of climate change, as well This Is Us and Speechless, two series produced by Twentieth Century Fox Television.

Michael W. Lamach, chairman and CEO of Ingersoll Rand, a world leader in creating comfortable, sustainable and efficient environments, joined more than 150 of America’s leading CEOs in a pledge to cultivate diversity and inclusion in the workplace through the CEO Action for Diversity & Inclusion™.

Amway Taiwan was awarded with the Model Award for the “Public Interest Promotion Category” of the 2017 Global Views CSR Awards. Global Views Monthly is one of the most influential magazines in Taiwan, providing new concepts, insights, and information needed by Taiwan’s entrepreneurs, government and opinion leaders.

Imagine you are seated on a patio in the Tuscan countryside. The fresh mozzarella coupled with sweet tomatoes, ripe from the warm sun, pairs beautifully with the garlic sourdough bread and crisp local wine. The setting opens the heart and soothes the soul. The vineyard you overlook is in its crucial stage of ripening, that last conversion of acid to sugar, and the company of friends and family couldn’t be better. Why are we drawn to such a scene? What distinguishes the Italian gestalt is that the essential character of the place grows out of community relationships fostered around a shared meal. But we don’t have to go miles across the sea to find this synergy. It can, & in fact, does exist in our own communities if we take the time to recognize and cultivate our foodshed’s infrastructure.