The ChamberPost

Building Community - National Launch & Local Impact

by Bev Dribin

5th post in a series on our journey to create ARAMARK Building Community, the company's signature community initiative to strength the capacity of the country's local community centers.

As word spread throughout the company about the ARAMARMK Building Community pilots locations, employees, from executives to hourly workers, became eager to participate.  Momentum was on our side.

However, before rolling out the initiative nationally, we needed to identify a few national partners with a local reach that could help us execute on a larger scale.  We needed partners with core competencies and experience in our social impact areas; the knowledge and access to the various independent community centers across the country; and a turnkey approach to conducting large-scale volunteerism events. We selected the following national partners.

• To help identify and forge partnerships with local community centers ARAMARK forged a multi-year partnership with Families International, Inc. (FI), which with its partner associations, the Alliance for Children and Families and the United Neighborhood Centers of America, Inc. (UNCA), forms the largest network of independent community centers in the United States. 

• To help organize and facilitate large-scale, high-impact events such as community center enhancement projects, ARAMARK partnered with City Year, one of the world's leading organizations in engaging citizens in community service. Together, ARAMARK and City Year's Care Force® division would apply their complementary expertise toward identifying pressing community center needs and designing meaningful experiences for ARAMARK employee volunteers. 

One of our final steps before going national was educating and equipping our ARAMARK Star Teams, groups of employees from all lines of business in a geographic region that help support community involvement at the local level.  Armed with learnings from the pilots, we created How-To Tool Kits and communications materials to provide guidance and to clearly articulate the initiative.  Our community relations team hosted our local engagement coordinators in Philadelphia for a two-day Community Involvement Summit, an introduction training session on how to develop relationships with their local community centers; recruit and motivate employee volunteers; coordinate and share all activities through a new online "portal;" and create impactful projects that utilize ARAMARK's strengths to serve the centers' members.  To demonstrate their support, ARAMARK's CEO and members of our management committee attended parts of this meeting.

Award-Winning Corporate Citizenship Campaign Continues in 2009

by Joanna Augustynski, Allstate Insurance Company

Allstate Insurance Company, with The Allstate Foundation, is mobilizing national, state and local resources in a comprehensive Teen Safe Driving Program to save young lives and make the roads safer in all communities. Car crashes are the number-one killer of U.S. teens. Each year, nearly 5,000 teens are killed (Insurance Institute for Highway safety) and another 300,000 injured (National Highway Traffic Safety Administration) in largely preventable collisions. The tragic emotional toll of crashes on families and communities is devastating. According to a recent study by Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation, teen crashes cost more than $34 billion in medical expenses, property damage, lost work, quality of life loss and other related costs in 2006 alone.

Through research, advocacy advertising, teen empowerment, parent education and partnerships with schools, community organizations, government agencies and health care providers, Allstate and The Allstate Foundation have invested significant resources since 2005 to help save young lives, preserve families and build safer communities. For this, Allstate and the Allstate Foundation received the 2008 Corporate Citizenship Award in the category of U.S. Community Service. (Watch a video of the awards presentation.)

The Teen Safe Driving Program continues to gain momentum and expand its reach through a surround sound approach to reach teens, parents and thought leaders. Some highlights of 2009 initiatives include the following.

• Allstate is supporting the creation of federal graduated driver licensing (GDL) standards that reflect sound research on how best to reduce teen driving crashes, by championing the passage of the Safe Teen and Novice Driver Uniform Protection (STANDUP) Act.
• Allstate launched Action Against Distraction, a national public awareness campaign aimed at changing driving behaviors and raising awareness around our current driving laws. Action Against Distraction Driver Challenge events will be held in 42 cities across the country to help teens and their parents better understand how changing driving behavior, as well as changing driving laws, can save lives and make our roads safer.
• As part of National Youth Traffic Safety Month, The Allstate Foundation and partner National Organizations for Youth Safety conducted Act Out Loud, the national teen-led, school-based smart driving activism competition.
• The Allstate Foundation is continuing its successful partnership with Channel One, the award-winning provider of in-school TV news. During the 2008-2009 school year Channel One delivered 32 smart driving messages to more than 8,000 schools and more than 6 million teens.

The Corporate Citizenship Award was a great honor and source of pride for Allstate and its employees. Most importantly, we hope the award helps us raise awareness of this important issue.

Celebrating Excellence in Math and Science

by Raju Doshi, Intel Education - Communications Manager

Last month Intel hosted Intel International Science and Engineering Fair (Intel ISEF), the world's largest pre-college science competition. The huge exhibition hall at the Reno Sparks convention center was filled with rows upon rows of amazing science projects, more than 1200 actually, submitted by 1563 students from 51 countries. An underground radio that can be used for cave and mine rescues; a versatile, cheaper and more efficient biosensor to detect contaminants in public water systems; a Styrofoam-decomposing bacteria to combat Styrofoam pollution -- these are just a few examples of the projects that were submitted this year. For the second year in a row, three women (Tara Adiseshan, Li Boynton and Olivia Schwob) took the top honors and received $50,000 each in college scholarships. You can learn more about their projects here.

The goal of the competition is to bring together millions of young scientists to share ideas, showcase cutting-edge science, and compete for scholarships. The competition also encourages students to tackle challenging scientific questions through authentic research practices to solve the problems of tomorrow. In an effort to provide an opportunity for an even larger audience to learn about the spectacular research these young scientists are conducting, we piloted an online people's choice award for the first time this year. You can read about the participants' projects and winners of that contest at www.Inspiredbyeducation.com. The science competitions such as Intel Science Talent Search (Intel STS) and Intel International Science and Engineering Fair are just one aspect of Intel's annual investment of more than $100 million to improve education and technology literacy around the world.

Takeaways from FEMA’s Private Sector Roundtable

By Gerald McSwiggan

Last week, I attended a private sector roundtable with the new FEMA Administrator, Craig Fugate. The fact that FEMA hosted a roundtable for stakeholders from the private sector is an encouraging sign. It shows that FEMA understands the importance of the private sector in the response and recovery process, and that they are willing to work together to improve the way our nation handles disasters.

Here are a few takeaways from the roundtable:

• The Administrator started the meeting by saying that as Emergency Management Director of the State of Florida, they originally thought about the private sector in terms of "what the private sector can do to help the government handle the disaster." But, as time went on, they started thinking, "what can the government do to help the private sector get back up and running?" The reason for this is that the private sector was providing all the goods and services to the population before the disaster, so the quicker the private sector can again be providing goods and services to the population, the quicker the community will rebound.
  
• The Administrator also mentioned that in Florida, the state brought associations into the State Emergency Operations Center to be a liaison with the private sector. This is an encouraging sign for BCLC to build upon our presence at the Joint Field Office last year during Hurricane Ike.
  
• I asked him about his thoughts on FEMA's role in long term recovery. He first said that people talk of long term recovery without having an actual definition of the word. He said that he believes long term recovery is reestablishing a tax base that is equal to or greater than before the disaster. He also said that people should not look to the Stafford Act for things that it cannot provide. FEMA is a reimbursement agency, so he said that communities need to also look for Community Development Block Grant dollars or other sources of funding to help bring back the community. He stressed the importance of community recovery, and the fact that even if businesses return, their employees need houses to live in, schools for the kids, etc. This idea of businesses and communities being inextricably linked is an encouraging sign from a government leader.

The Pilot - Learning by Doing

by Bev Dribin

4th post in a series on our journey to create ARAMARK Building Community, the company’s signature community initiative to strength the capacity of the country’s local community centers.

With the "green light" to move forward, it was time to pilot ARAMARK Building Community, our new, branded signature initiative focused on strengthening the capacity of local community centers.  We chose several of our most important business markets – Houston, Chicago and Philadelphia - to demonstrate the power of the concept and to test different program models.  

Holly Montalbano, ARAMARK Vice President of External Affairs in Houston, quickly identified a local community center partner for the first local pilot partnership. "From our first meeting with Neighborhood Centers, Inc. (NCI), we were hopeful that we had found the perfect partner," says Montalbano.  A network of 59 community centers serving more than 200,000 people of all ages, NCI provided the types of services that ARAMARK could contribute to, but more importantly, was committed to forming mutually beneficial public-private partnerships to help those who need it most. 

The ARAMARK team wanted to make it clear that, while we were coming to the table with certain assets and resources, we had no set agenda of what the program would look like. "Our first priority was to understand NCI's needs, particularly in our focus areas – workforce readiness, basic human services and health and wellness – to identify some opportunities for collaboration in our first year," says Montalbano, "The folks at NCI were very willing to jump in with us and figure out together how we would combine forces for the community."

State Department: New Ideas and Innovative Partnerships

by Taryn Bird

As a new administration begins to unveil new policies and organizational structures, we are finding new opportunities for growth and new appointees for leaderships.  As we still wait for the CEO of the Millennium Challenge Corporation and Administrator for USAID to be named the State Department has recently named Ambassador Elizabeth Frawley Bagley, Special Representative for Global Partnerships at the US Department of State.  This position is a new post in the State Department and reflects their commitment to work with private sector partners to push forward on an innovative aid agenda. 

In addition on June 3 the State Department hosted, Ted@State. This was the first government sponsored Ted talk and featured speakers discussing “ new ideas for a better world”.  Professors, Authors, Economists and the Ambassador herself spoke to the ways in which technology has allowed economic development programs to expand, scale up and reach more markets, producers and consumers than ever before.

As the State Department continues to expand their partnerships they will engage with new partners through their Global Partnership Center and if you are interested in learning more you can contact the Global Partnership Center at State here. Also additional resources for the State Department can be found here.

Assistance or Development?

by Stephen Jordan

This week was a tale of two events that underscored a tension many people in the corporate social responsibility (CSR) world face – are we in philanthropy and humanitarian assistance or are we in development?  Are we giving out fish or are we teaching people how to fish?  Are we prioritizing business or society?   How can we do both most effectively?

On Tuesday, I went to New York to attend the Committee Encouraging Corporate Philanthropy’s Award Dinner recognizing the work of Western Union, Liquidnet, and the Boys and Girls Clubs of America.  Then on Wednesday, I flew down to Raleigh to sit in on the International Association of Science Parks  conference – a highlight of which was IBM Foundation president Stan Litow’s presentation about encouraging science and technology tools for economic development.

When I talk with government and non-profit partners, they tend to want assistance with their agendas.  They tend to begin by asking for assistance with schools or hospitals or refugees or climate change for a particular region or demographic, and then they try to work backwards from the social cause to get to the business case.  “Working on X disease is not just socially responsible; it’s good for workforce productivity.”  “Working on climate change reduces waste and increases energy utilization.”

But if you start with the social cause as the premise, in the minds of many executives, you have crossed over into the land of philanthropy and altruism, which annoys some CSR practitioners to no end.  This is particularly true in the European context, where many people have worked diligently to associate CSR with corporate operations, and not financial support for external causes.

A Perfect Fit – Community Centers

by Bev Dribin

3rd post in a series (see one and two) on our journey to create ARAMARK Building Community, the company’s signature community initiative to strength the capacity of the country’s local community centers.

With firm guideposts in place and a decision made on the issues we wanted to address, we started on partner identification.  We searched for organizations that would be most aligned with ARAMARK’s social issue priorities and goals. 

Our research revealed that there are essential, yet under-recognized and under resourced places in nearly every city where individuals and families go every day for help on a wide variety of needs.  Local independent community centers, also known as “neighborhood centers” or “settlement houses,” address some of the nation’s toughest challenges, especially during difficult economic times.  Whether it is providing food to the hungry, emergency shelter to families that have lost their homes, job training to people looking for better opportunities, or clothing for those fallen on hard times, these centers work to improve their local communities and offer much-needed help to their neighbors. 

Measuring What Matters: City Works Toward Sustainability Goals

by David Fujimoto

Measuring what matters. That's the goal behind a new initiative here at City of Issaquah, which is a 2009 Siemens Sustainable Community program honoree.

Called the "Sustainability Sounding Board," a group of community leaders appointed by Issaquah's mayor, recently unveiled its long-term vision for a sustainable Issaquah, as well as recommendations for how the community can begin to measure its progress toward that goal.

In late 2008, Mayor Ava Frisinger created the board, which includes 16 citizens and representatives from social service organizations, businesses and the environmental community. The board members met four times to develop its final report for the mayor.

Hurricane Season is Here Again

by Gerald McSwiggan

How often do you think about helping communities that have been devastated by disasters?  Many company foundations and community relations staff members think about this topic every day, and even more so now that hurricane season is upon us again. 

Last year, BCLC published a report entitled "On The Brink: Re-Engineering the Nation's Disaster Response Processes" where companies like Office Depot, UPS, Abbott, Fed Ex, Google, State Farm and others wrote about best practices to change the way our country handles disasters.  The major question in the report was what happens to communities after the TV cameras leave and people stop talking about the terrible things that happened?  The answer, all too often, is that communities struggle.  Countless companies across the nation want to change this fact.