April is International Volunteer Month. All month lengthy, we’re recognizing among the methods Cisco staff give their time, expertise, and experience of their communities.
In 1991, the US established April as Nationwide Volunteer Month. Right now, 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 staff 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—but it surely’s not simply financial donations which might be eligible for matches. By this system, staff 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, staff 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, staff just lately partnered with Hearty Basis, a neighborhood group that helps kids’s training and social welfare. Cisco staff organized a sequence of workshops for college students centered on cyber safety, programming, and different important digital expertise. In addition they developed a full-day Future STEM Heroes occasion designed to ignite an curiosity in science and expertise. Altogether, staff volunteered 36 hours of their time to assist college students leading to a Cisco donation of $3,600 to the muse.
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 decreasing 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, staff not solely realized concerning the necessary work this group is doing, in addition they raised greater than $3,500 to maintain this crucial analysis going.”
All the time-On Alternatives
Our always-on Neighborhood Impression Portal is a digital device that permits staff each to arrange volunteer occasions for others to affix and to join volunteering. Volunteering may be in-person, digital, or team-based. Our staff volunteer for the whole lot from native meals kitchens to worldwide assist organizations to digital camps that assist youngsters study expertise.
“In FY24, our buyer engineering crew had 100% participation in volunteering” says Buyer Supply Chief Monica Huerta Castillo. “Cisco’s Neighborhood Impression Portal helped us establish volunteer alternatives. We’ve performed the whole lot from digital volunteering to on-site actions to going out to volunteer on tasks within the discipline. We do it as a result of it’s a part of who we’re. We additionally discover that our crew tradition—which incorporates our values of belief, humility, empathy, and curiosity—is strengthened once we volunteer collectively. If we are able to impression the world as a crew, 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 one in every of our enterprise models, we acknowledged the ability of a centered week that brings our staff collectively. That’s why we’re increasing this system to be accessible to all staff. We associate with neighborhood teams in focus areas comparable to training, sustainability, meals safety, and poverty.
Paid Time Off for Volunteering
One other manner we help worker volunteerism is thru our Time2Give profit, which offers every worker as much as 10 days of paid day off per 12 months to volunteer. Some staff have taken a two-week block to journey on worldwide volunteer missions. Others unfold their day trip with common volunteering in faculties. Nonetheless others have used their time to offer specialised expertise to nonprofits comparable to coding and professional bono authorized work.
Stella Au, an govt 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 householders 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 objective to have 80% of staff give again to their communities at the very least as soon as within the 12 months 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 a variety of completely different types. Organized volunteer efforts have worth, however so can doing one thing good for a neighbor in want. That’s why staff may contribute to our 80% objective by means of Cisco Citizen, a program that acknowledges volunteer efforts not lined by different applications.
In FY24, we as soon as once more hit our 80% objective with 70,000 Cisco staff all over the world performing in service of individuals, planet, and society.
“I really feel very lucky to work for a corporation that cares for not solely staff’ wellbeing, but in addition our communities and atmosphere,” 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 ability to unite individuals to come back collectively to make higher impacts. Much more important and significant impacts may be made when there’s help from companies. By 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 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. Participating at scale permits us to donate extra to nonprofits, reply to extra crises, enhance volunteering help, and do extra good for the world.
Throughout International Volunteer Month, we acknowledge and rejoice all of the methods our staff make a constructive impression.
To study extra concerning the impression Cisco staff are making, take a look at our “What We Completed” eBook about how we’ve got supported our staff’ giving again efforts and reworked our collective contributions within the course of.
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