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Shell Helps Nonprofits Meet Staffing Needs
In the nonprofit world, agencies are strapped for resources, with leadership and staff juggling many responsibilities, leaving little time for professional development. Last week I wrote about a Shell Oil Company program that helps nonprofit organizations build leadership capacity. This week’s story on Shell is focused on supporting nonprofits at the staff level.
Shell’s Nonprofit Internship Program, launched in 2008, provides $2,500 grants to 30 nonprofit agencies in Houston to hire qualified college students to work eight weeks during the summer months. Agencies are selected based on their work in three key areas of social investment targeted by Shell: education, environment, and diversity.
Volunteer Houston manages the summer internship program, matching qualified agencies with college applicants in meaningful positions that meet both the agencies’ needs and the students’ career goals. In addition to the work experience, Shell sponsors 
and participates in three networking events during the eight-week program, enabling students from universities in Texas and across the country...
CVS Says “All Kids Can!”
Yesterday I wrote about a program by Health Care Services Corporation that helps foster health-conscious youth. Today’s post is about a corporate-nonprofit partnership formed to foster yet another positive quality in youth: acceptance of those who are different from you.
6% of all U.S. children under the age of 12 have a disability resulting in functional limitation. Yet, in many communities, no fully inclusive playgrounds exist.
This means that a large population of children is currently excluded from playground play, one of the fundamental and essential parts of being a kid. Barriers such as these add to the considerable struggles that children with disabilities and their families already face in connecting with their communities.
CVS Caremark has partnered with Boundless Playgrounds, Inc. for the past four years to bring more inclusive playgrounds to communities across the country.
CVS Caremark’s signature giving program is “All Kids Can,” a five-year, $25 million commitment to make life easier for children with disabilities and to raise awareness about the importance of inclusion. Meanwhile, Boundless Playgrounds’ mission is to build inclusive playgrounds where children with and without...
HCSC’s WiseGuys Tackle Childhood Obesity
Meet Hardy Heart. He’s a wise guy … an OrganWise guy, and his job is to help foster health-conscious youth.
Childhood obesity is a chronic problem, with 32% of children today considered overweight. Obesity at all ages has dire implications for individual health, creating an enormous strain on healthcare costs. Individuals, employers, and communities are all impacted by the costs, both financial and personal, of obesity.
In 2006, Health Care Service Corporation (HCSC) piloted a school-based program to teach children to make positive choices that help them take care of their own bodies.
Using imaginative and humorous characters based on the organs of the body, the HCSC OrganWiseGuys Community Outreach program inspires children to follow four rules: “low fat, high fiber, lots of water, exercise!”
The OrganWise Guys program is correlated with school standards in each of the states in which HCSC does business as the local Blue Cross and Blue Shield Plan. HCSC funds the OrganWise Guys core kit for elementary schools with at least a 50% free lunch participation. The kit includes books, videos, interactive games, and an OrganWise doll, available in various ethnicities.
HCSC wanted to invest in a program that showed results. The company piloted the OrganWise Guys program in Texas with 20 schools. It was received so well by teachers and civic leaders that the program was expanded to four other states. Comprehensive research based on a four-...
ITT Engineers Opportunities to Tackle Water Scarcity Threat
When treatment systems recycle wastewater into clean water, cities like Lima, Peru, are able to safely irrigate nearly 1,000 acres of farmland per day. This is a prime example of how one of BCLC’s 2009 Corporate Stewardship Award finalists addresses a pressing global issue: water scarcity.
ITT is a high-technology engineering and manufacturing company that specializes in water and fluids management, global defense and security, and motion and flow control. It is also a company helping to bring safe water, sanitation, and hygiene education to more than 300 schools in Asia and Latin America – improving the lives of more than 100,000 children and their families.
ITT is committed to safeguarding the climate, communities, and resources while also focusing on sustainable growth and development. Additional ways the company took on the water challenge in 2008 included:
* Supported 52 schools in Latin America and Asia with safe water, sanitation and hygiene, directly impacting more than 36,000 students.
* Provided safe water to more than 190,000 people following emergencies.
* Sent the first wave of ITT volunteers to Honduras and Guatemala in April 2009 to work alongside Water For People’s team of World Water Corps workers to evaluate water availability, sanitation conditions and hygiene practices, take photographs, collect water samples, and interview students...
More on Safe Driving: Ford Protecting Children
Ford was another finalist in the 2009 Corporate Citizenship Awards program is Ford, along with its nonprofit partner, the National Latino Children Institute. Like UPS, Ford and NLCI also have a road safety program. This one, called Corazon de mi vida, is dedicated to protecting children as they ride in vehicles with their parents.
More on the partnership:
Traffic fatalities are the leading cause of death for Latino children; most are due to improper or lack of use of child passenger safety (CPS) restraint systems (car seats, safety belts, etc.). Contributing factors include economic, cultural and language barriers.
Since 2003 Ford Motor Company Fund and the NLCI have joined forces with a nationwide network of safety advocates and community groups to raise awareness among Latinos about the important role safety seats and seat belts play in saving children’s lives.
The Corazón CPS model was developed after conducting focus groups with Latinos in 12 cities which found, among other things, that mothers believed children were safer in their laps than in a car seat and that there was a cultural and linguistic divide. For many, the notion of having their newborn ride in the back seat facing backwards came across as cold and distant.
As such, it was...
Award-Winning UPS Safe Driving Program
Last week UPS won the 2009 U.S. Community Service Award, part of our annual Corporate Citizenship Awards, for a teen safe-driving program that models the safety techniques of its global corps of drivers. Lisa Hamilton, who is an originator of the community program, happily accepted the award (watch Lisa’s video remarks).
The teen-focused program is called “Road Code.” Here’s the story:
UPS Road Code is a national program designed to teach safe-driving techniques to teens. Developed by UPS and the UPS Foundation, the program helps prevent teen injuries and deaths by teaching the defensive driving skills that make UPS drivers the safest on the road. UPS safety and training experts adapted UPS’s world-class defensive driving methods, including the interactive tools developed for UPS’s newest generation of drivers, into UPS Road Code.
Road Code is a four-week teen safe-driving course. During one session per week, UPS’s volunteer driving experts 
present two hours of classroom instruction to young people ages 13 -18 at their local Boys & Girls Club.
Parental involvement is key and at the end of the final session, students, parents, and UPS...
Nationwide and Red Cross: Partners in Crisis
The Nationwide Foundation has partnered with the American Red Cross to support Disaster Services and Biomedical Services for more than 25 years. Most recently, the Foundation awarded the American Red Cross $1.7 million to support local and national disaster preparedness and response and to fund three new blood collection vehicles.
This partnership helps local Red Cross chapters prepare for and respond to disasters and assist communities in getting back on their feet. Most recently, the Foundation awarded the American Red Cross $1.7 million to support local and national disaster preparedness and response and to fund three new blood collection vehicles.
The Foundation’s support of 15 chapters across the U.S. bolsters the core mission of Red Cross disaster services at the local level, such as providing essential staff and volunteer training, securing essential emergency supplies for disaster response, and providing direct emergency assistance to families and individuals affected by disasters. The Foundation also provides additional financial support to the Red Cross during times of disaster.
The benefits of Nationwide’s support are measured by the number of families assisted annually by the chapters and by the amount of financial assistance and services received by families following a disaster. In 2008, the Foundation enabled the Red Cross to respond to more than 1,500 local community disasters and assist more than 1,800 families who were affected...
Intel Supports Post-Earthquake China
Today BCLC is focusing on the business role in disaster response (In one hour from now, we are hosting a FREE webinar, “First Step in Disaster Response: Employee Assistance” — there’s still time to participate).
In this spirit, I have two “Business Gives Back” stories to share today. Both stories illustrate the role companies can play in post-disaster communities. For their commitment to strengthening communities and individuals during hard times, both companies were honorees in the U.S. Chamber BCLC 2009 Corporate Citizenship Awards.
First, Intel. In a few hours, Nationwide with its nonprofit partner, the American Red Cross.
Intel Corporation and the iWorld Project Sichuan, China
When a devastating earthquake struck China’s Sichuan Province in May 2008, immediate relief support was just one part of how Intel responded. The company’s Chengdu assembly and test facility is located in the disaster region, so helping advance recovery was top of mind for Intel. The extent of the earthquake’s damage meant that long-term support would be critical.
In the wake of the disaster, a team at Intel began working to identify ways that Intel could apply technology innovations to help to address ongoing recovery efforts. Just 10 days after the earthquake, while many were...
Intel Supports Post-Earthquake China
Today BCLC is focusing on the business role in disaster response (In one hour from now, we are hosting a FREE webinar, “First Step in Disaster Response: Employee Assistance” — there’s still time to participate).
In this spirit, I have two “Business Gives Back” stories to share today. Both stories illustrate the role companies can play in post-disaster communities. For their commitment to strengthening communities and individuals during hard times, both companies were honorees in the U.S. Chamber BCLC 2009 Corporate Citizenship Awards.
First, Intel. In a few hours, Nationwide with its nonprofit partner, the American Red Cross.
Intel Corporation and the iWorld Project Sichuan, China
When a devastating earthquake struck China’s Sichuan Province in May 2008, immediate relief support was just one 
part of how Intel responded. The company’s Chengdu assembly and test facility is located in the disaster region, so helping advance recovery was top of mind for Intel. The extent of the earthquake’s damage meant that long-term support would...
American Joblessness and the Social Responsibility Pyramid
By BJ Parker
With just 11,000 jobs lost in November instead of the 130,000 expected by economists, Americans are increasingly hopeful that a jobs recovery is in the works.
Despite that good news, the U.S. jobless rate is hovering at 10 percent, and this number doesn’t include part-timers or millions of despondent workers who have given up looking for employment. With these “underemployed workers” added in, more than 17 percent of America is either out of work or forced to accept a part-time schedule.
Put mildly, this is a national crisis.
But as White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel famously quipped before a gathering of business leaders, “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste.” From the perspective of corporate social responsibility, not letting a crisis go to waste means rethinking the role of business in society—and that means taking a fresh look at the CSR Pyramid.
As the CSR Pyramid illustrates, businesses have a primary economic responsibility to “be profitable.” Resting on this...
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