April is International Volunteer Month. All month lengthy, we’re recognizing among the methods Cisco workers give their time, abilities, and experience of their communities.
In 1991, the US established April as Nationwide Volunteer Month. Right this moment, that scope has expanded, and it’s acknowledged as International Volunteer Month. Since Cisco’s founding 40 years in the past, giving again to our communities has been part of our custom.
Giving again as a behavior is a part of what it means to work at Cisco right this moment. It’s an necessary side of our tradition and supported by a wide range of applications. Merely put, our workers love to assist their communities and Cisco helps their efforts.
Workers Volunteer, Cisco Donates
Our industry-leading Matching Items Program matches eligible worker money and inventory donations dollar-for-dollar as much as $10,000 every year—nevertheless it’s not simply financial donations which might be eligible for matches. By means of this system, workers may get their volunteer time matched with a $10-per-hour donation from Cisco to the group the place they gave their time.
In FY24, workers gave 720,000 hours in volunteer time and used the Matching Items Program to get their eligible hours matched with a donation from Cisco.
For instance, in Kraków, workers just lately partnered with Hearty Basis, a neighborhood group that helps kids’s schooling and social welfare. Cisco workers organized a sequence of workshops for college students targeted on cyber safety, programming, and different important digital abilities. In addition they developed a full-day Future STEM Heroes occasion designed to ignite an curiosity in science and expertise. Altogether, workers volunteered 36 hours of their time to assist college students leading to a Cisco donation of $3,600 to the inspiration.
In London, our Meraki Offers EMEA chapter organized a digital volunteering occasion with the Psychiatry Analysis Belief. Workers from across the globe attended and realized concerning the group’s groundbreaking analysis, in addition to the significance of each resilience in our communities and the worth of lowering psychological well being stigma.
“Cisco’s $10 match per volunteer hour added a particular dimension to our partnership with the Belief,” mentioned Meraki Offers International Co-lead Racha Tfaili. “By getting their time matched with donations, workers not solely realized concerning the necessary work this group is doing, in addition they raised greater than $3,500 to maintain this essential analysis going.”
At all times-On Alternatives
Our always-on Neighborhood Influence Portal is a digital software that permits workers each to arrange volunteer occasions for others to hitch and to enroll in volunteering. Volunteering could be in-person, digital, or team-based. Our workers volunteer for every little thing from native meals kitchens to worldwide support organizations to digital camps that assist youngsters study expertise.
“In FY24, our buyer engineering group had 100% participation in volunteering” says Buyer Supply Chief Monica Huerta Castillo. “Cisco’s Neighborhood Influence Portal helped us determine volunteer alternatives. We’ve executed every little thing from digital volunteering to on-site actions to going out to volunteer on initiatives within the area. We do it as a result of it’s a part of who we’re. We additionally discover that our group tradition—which incorporates our values of belief, humility, empathy, and curiosity—is strengthened once we volunteer collectively. If we are able to affect the world as a group, think about what we are able to do inside Cisco!”
In 2025, we’re making it simpler for workers to search out and be a part of volunteer occasions by means of our new companywide quarterly International Week of Giving. Began organically by considered one of our enterprise items, we acknowledged the ability of a targeted week that brings our workers collectively. That’s why we’re increasing this system to be accessible to all workers. We accomplice with group teams in focus areas similar to schooling, sustainability, meals safety, and poverty.
Paid Time Off for Volunteering
One other approach we help worker volunteerism is thru our Time2Give profit, which gives every worker as much as 10 days of paid break day per yr to volunteer. Some workers have taken a two-week block to journey on worldwide volunteer missions. Others unfold their trip with common volunteering in faculties. Nonetheless others have used their time to present specialised abilities to nonprofits similar to coding and professional bono authorized work.
Stella Au, an government assistant in New York, traveled to Vietnam the place she was joined by six Cisco colleagues from Australia. Collectively, they used their Time2Give advantages to assist construct a house for 2 sisters in Thai Binh. “I traded my laptop computer for shovel and trowel and bought my arms soiled—mixing cement, slicing metal wires, and laying bricks,” mentioned Au. “One of many new householders burst into tears overwhelmed with pleasure that she now not has to run to a neighbor’s home each time it rains. That’s when it actually hit me: this was greater than only a home—we had been constructing safety, hope, and a brighter future. Cisco’s Time2Give made it potential for me to do that.”
It All Provides Up
In FY16, we set a objective to have 80% of workers give again to their communities a minimum of as soon as within the yr by 2020. We achieved this milestone and have sustained it every year since.
One of many methods we did this was by recognizing that giving again takes numerous completely different varieties. Organized volunteer efforts have worth, however so can doing one thing good for a neighbor in want. That’s why workers may contribute to our 80% objective by means of Cisco Citizen, a program that acknowledges volunteer efforts not coated by different applications.
In FY24, we as soon as once more hit our 80% objective with 70,000 Cisco workers around the globe performing in service of individuals, planet, and society.
“I really feel very lucky to work for a corporation that cares for not solely workers’ wellbeing, but in addition our communities and surroundings,” mentioned Digital Advertising Supervisor Vivien Chia, who can be the APJC Lead for Cisco’s Inexperienced Workforce Community. “In my view, giving again has the ability to unite folks to return collectively to make higher impacts. Much more vital and significant impacts could be made when there’s help from companies. By means of the Matching Items Program, Time2Give, and the Cisco Citizen volunteer monitoring program, we are able to elevate extra consciousness and expedite pressing change.”
Making a Collective Influence
Our collective actions have contributed to constructing a tradition the place serving communities in want has turn out to be a part of our DNA. Partaking at scale allows us to donate extra to nonprofits, reply to extra crises, improve volunteering help, and do extra good for the world.
Throughout International Volunteer Month, we acknowledge and rejoice all of the methods our workers make a optimistic affect.
To study extra concerning the affect Cisco workers are making, take a look at our “What We Achieved” eBook about how we’ve got supported our workers’ giving again efforts and reworked our collective contributions within the course of.
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