April is International Volunteer Month. All month lengthy, we’re recognizing a number of the methods Cisco workers give their time, abilities, and experience of their communities.
In 1991, the US established April as Nationwide Volunteer Month. Immediately, 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 in the present day. It’s an necessary facet of our tradition and supported by quite a lot of applications. Merely put, our workers love to assist their communities and Cisco helps their efforts.
Staff Volunteer, Cisco Donates
Our industry-leading Matching Presents 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 way 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 Presents 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 collection of workshops for college students centered 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 Provides EMEA chapter organized a digital volunteering occasion with the Psychiatry Analysis Belief. Staff from across the globe attended and realized in regards to 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 Provides International Co-lead Racha Tfaili. “By getting their time matched with donations, workers not solely realized in regards to the necessary work this group is doing, in addition they raised greater than $3,500 to maintain this vital analysis going.”
All the time-On Alternatives
Our always-on Neighborhood Impression Portal is a digital software that permits workers each to prepare volunteer occasions for others to affix and to join volunteering. Volunteering may be in-person, digital, or team-based. Our workers volunteer for every thing from native meals kitchens to worldwide help organizations to digital camps that assist youngsters find out about expertise.
“In FY24, our buyer engineering staff had 100% participation in volunteering” says Buyer Supply Chief Monica Huerta Castillo. “Cisco’s Neighborhood Impression Portal helped us establish volunteer alternatives. We’ve carried out every thing from digital volunteering to on-site actions to going out to volunteer on initiatives within the subject. We do it as a result of it’s a part of who we’re. We additionally discover that our staff 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 staff, think about what we are able to do inside Cisco!”
In 2025, we’re making it simpler for workers to search out and be part of volunteer occasions by our new companywide quarterly International Week of Giving. Began organically by considered one of our enterprise items, we acknowledged the facility of a centered week that brings our workers collectively. That’s why we’re increasing this system to be accessible to all workers. We companion with neighborhood teams in focus areas comparable to schooling, sustainability, meals safety, and poverty.
Paid Time Off for Volunteering
One other means we assist worker volunteerism is thru our Time2Give profit, which offers every worker as much as 10 days of paid day without work per yr to volunteer. Some workers have taken a two-week block to journey on worldwide volunteer missions. Others unfold their outing with common volunteering in colleges. Nonetheless others have used their time to provide specialised abilities to nonprofits comparable 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 obtained my fingers soiled—mixing cement, reducing metal wires, and laying bricks,” mentioned Au. “One of many new owners burst into tears overwhelmed with pleasure that she 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 have been constructing safety, hope, and a brighter future. Cisco’s Time2Give made it attainable for me to do that.”
It All Provides Up
In FY16, we set a aim to have 80% of workers give again to their communities no less than 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 loads of totally different kinds. 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% aim by Cisco Citizen, a program that acknowledges volunteer efforts not lined by different applications.
In FY24, we as soon as once more hit our 80% aim with 70,000 Cisco workers around the globe appearing in service of individuals, planet, and society.
“I really feel very lucky to work for an organization that cares for not solely workers’ wellbeing, but additionally our communities and surroundings,” mentioned Digital Advertising and marketing Supervisor Vivien Chia, who can be the APJC Lead for Cisco’s Inexperienced Staff Community. “In my view, giving again has the facility to unite individuals to return collectively to make better impacts. Much more important and significant impacts may be made when there may be assist from companies. By way of the Matching Presents Program, Time2Give, and the Cisco Citizen volunteer monitoring program, we are able to elevate extra consciousness and expedite pressing change.”
Making a Collective Impression
Our collective actions have contributed to constructing a tradition the place serving communities in want has grow to be a part of our DNA. Partaking at scale permits us to donate extra to nonprofits, reply to extra crises, improve volunteering assist, and do extra good for the world.
Throughout International Volunteer Month, we acknowledge and have a good time all of the methods our workers make a constructive affect.
To study extra in regards to the affect Cisco workers are making, take a look at our “What We Completed” eBook about how we have now supported our workers’ giving again efforts and reworked our collective contributions within the course of.
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