This week, Clarke celebrated its 7th Annual Day of Caring – our company-wide volunteerism effort that gives back to the communities where we live and work. In our largest Day of Caring to date, we had 281 employees, working on 23 different volunteer projects, across 10 states and 5 different countries. Wow!
When we first started Day of Caring, we held the event in the fall. But a few years ago, we switched the event to the summer season for two main reasons. First, Clarke adds hundreds of seasonal coworkers across its operations for the busy summer season, and we recognized that with more people, we could do more for communities. And secondly, we challenged ourselves to make a bold statement about how deeply we value the principle of service. We felt that if our coworkers and customers saw Clarke dedicating this time, during what is traditionally the busiest season of the year, it would really demonstrate that Clarke is a company in service to its customers and communities. And, we keep a skeleton crew on operations to make sure that customer service requests are met.
As you can imagine, organizing an effort like this is a colossal undertaking, and the planning committee works for months to select partner organizations and project sites, and coordinate all the logistics that go into getting 300+ people registered, supplied, shuttled, fed and hydrated. What our planning team does, on top of their daily work responsibilities during peak season, to plan Day of Caring is amazing. These men and women are the heart of Clarke!
We’re super proud to share that since starting Day of Caring, this effort has generated 12,728 hours of community volunteerism.
Check out the highlight reel, capturing many of the projects we worked on during the 2018 Day of Caring on July 17!