Lionbridge Community Action Update
Posted on Thu, Jan 28, 2010 @ 01:35 PM
We're launching this new "Up Close and Personal" section of the Lionbridge Translation Team Blog today with a few words from Katherine Pyburn, one of our Business Development Directors in Waltham, who coordinates our Community Action efforts.
You probably know Lionbridge is a fairly big company, but did you know the foundation of our company is a big-hearted staff, actively engaged in community service the world over?
"Lionbridge Community Action" is not a corporate initiative but rather an employee-conceived and employee-managed concept.
In 2008 we began our inaugural event in the U.S. with a food drive run by our U.S. offices. We gathered 1,829 food items (including some prepared meals, chickens, a turkey) along with monetary donations that equaled about 11,000 meals to hungry families. In the fall of 2009 we had "team walks" at several of the local offices, raising about $3,000 for the fights against Cystic Fibrosis, breast cancer, homelessness, and hunger.
This holiday season U.S. employees once again ran drives at our offices to support local organizations of their choosing, including Boston's Home for Little Wanderers, Seattle's Sibling House, Boulder County's Social Services, DC's Capitol Area Food Bank, Ft. Collins' Harmony House, and Los Angeles' Ocean Park Community Center. Each office contributed generously to their local charity.
One heartwarming example is our Bellevue office, who sponsored 16 foster children for Christmas, ages 5 months to 18 years. Each child received two gifts from their Christmas lists and each family received a $25 gift card for Safeway and a box of gently-used clothes in their children's sizes. Most of the children had never received Christmas gifts before and the families were so grateful!
Outside the U.S., many of our offices also engage in their own form of community service. Our Dublin office works closely with FIT, a non-profit organization which provides a training platform to help long-term unemployed return to the workforce. Our Warsaw office runs a blood drive, and collects money for victims of catastrophes and its own employees suffering from dangerous diseases. Lionbridge Amsterdam has also a adopted a child in Dengasargi, India, and has for many years contributed a monthly stipend to Plan Nederland to help him and his family.
Lionbridge India, home of our largest group of employees, is also one of our most socially active sites, cooperating closely with India's Community Outreach Program. This generally includes at least one event per month (below is a brief list of examples):
- Visits to orphanages and homes for the elderly to spend time with the people there and giving them some love and care, plus a small song and dance show created by the employees.
- Working with the agency for mentally challenged children to put up a stall in our premises where they sell a large volume of home-use products made by the children.
- A day was spent with AIDS afflicted children in a special shelter. Employees taught the children music, drawing, etc. Lionbridge also donated a music system to them to provide them a few hours of happiness listening to music.
The holiday season may be over but with the current news of the disaster in Haiti, our attention turns outward once again, and our U.S. offices are doing some fund-raising to contribute to the relief effort. We are reminded that small efforts by many can add up to large effects in the lives of those less fortunate, and are happy to have so many employees be a part of this community.