International Volunteer Month shines highlight on Cisco DNA

April is International Volunteer Month. All month lengthy, we’re recognizing among the methods Cisco workers give their time, expertise, and experience of their communities.

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In 1991, the US established April as Nationwide Volunteer Month. As we speak, 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 side of our tradition and supported by a wide range of packages. 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—but it surely’s not simply financial donations which might be eligible for matches. Via this system, workers also can 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, an area group that helps youngsters’s training and social welfare. Cisco workers organized a sequence of workshops for college kids centered on cyber safety, programming, and different important digital expertise. Additionally 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. Workers from across the globe attended and discovered 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 Provides International Co-lead Racha Tfaili. “By getting their time matched with donations, workers not solely discovered concerning the necessary work this group is doing, additionally they raised greater than $3,500 to maintain this essential analysis going.”

All the time-On Alternatives  

Our always-on Group Impression Portal is a digital software that permits workers each to arrange volunteer occasions for others to affix and to join volunteering. Volunteering may be in-person, digital, or team-based. Our workers volunteer for every part from native meals kitchens to worldwide assist 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 Group Impression Portal helped us establish volunteer alternatives. We’ve carried out every part 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 group 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 group, think about what we are able to do inside Cisco!”

In 2025, we’re making it simpler for workers to seek out and be a part of volunteer occasions by way of 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 obtainable to all workers. We accomplice with group teams in focus areas reminiscent of training, sustainability, meals safety, and poverty.

Paid Time Off for Volunteering

One other approach we help worker volunteerism is thru our Time2Give profit, which offers every worker as much as 10 days of paid day without work per 12 months 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 provide specialised expertise to nonprofits reminiscent of 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 acquired my fingers soiled—mixing cement, slicing 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 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 no less than 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 numerous totally different kinds. Organized volunteer efforts have worth, however so can doing one thing good for a neighbor in want. That’s why workers also can contribute to our 80% objective by way of Cisco Citizen, a program that acknowledges volunteer efforts not lined by different packages.

In FY24, we as soon as once more hit our 80% objective 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 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 facility to unite folks to return collectively to make better impacts. Much more vital and significant impacts may be made when there’s help from companies. Via the Matching Items Program, Time2Give, and the Cisco Citizen volunteer monitoring program, we are able to increase 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 allows 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 have a good time all of the methods our workers make a constructive impression.

To study extra concerning the impression Cisco workers are making, try our “What We Achieved” eBook about how we’ve got supported our workers’ giving again efforts and remodeled our collective contributions within the course of.

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