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. 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 in the present day. It’s an vital side 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.
Workers Volunteer, Cisco Donates
Our industry-leading Matching Presents Program matches eligible worker money and inventory donations dollar-for-dollar as much as $10,000 annually—nevertheless it’s not simply financial donations which are 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 Presents Program to get their eligible hours matched with a donation from Cisco.
For instance, in Kraków, workers not too long ago partnered with Hearty Basis, an area group that helps kids’s training and social welfare. Cisco workers organized a collection of workshops for college kids targeted on cyber safety, programming, and different important digital abilities. Additionally they developed a full-day Future STEM Heroes occasion designed to ignite an curiosity in science and know-how. 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 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 Offers International Co-lead Racha Tfaili. “By getting their time matched with donations, workers not solely discovered concerning the vital work this group is doing, in addition they raised greater than $3,500 to maintain this vital analysis going.”
At all times-On Alternatives
Our always-on Group Affect Portal is a digital device that permits workers each to prepare volunteer occasions for others to hitch and to enroll in volunteering. Volunteering will 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 children find out about know-how.
“In FY24, our buyer engineering group had 100% participation in volunteering” says Buyer Supply Chief Monica Huerta Castillo. “Cisco’s Group Affect Portal helped us establish volunteer alternatives. We’ve achieved 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 after we volunteer collectively. If we are able to influence 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 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 ability of a targeted week that brings our workers collectively. That’s why we’re increasing this system to be obtainable to all workers. We associate with neighborhood teams in focus areas resembling training, sustainability, meals safety, and poverty.
Paid Time Off for Volunteering
One other means we assist worker volunteerism is thru our Time2Give profit, which gives every worker as much as 10 days of paid time without work per yr to volunteer. Some workers have taken a two-week block to journey on worldwide volunteer missions. Others unfold their day trip with common volunteering in colleges. Nonetheless others have used their time to provide specialised abilities to nonprofits resembling 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, 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 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 aim to have 80% of workers give again to their communities at the least as soon as within the yr by 2020. We achieved this milestone and have sustained it annually since.
One of many methods we did this was by recognizing that giving again takes a number of totally different varieties. 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% aim by Cisco Citizen, a program that acknowledges volunteer efforts not coated by different applications.
In FY24, we as soon as once more hit our 80% aim with 70,000 Cisco workers world wide 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 additionally our communities and surroundings,” mentioned Digital Advertising and marketing Supervisor Vivien Chia, who can also be the APJC Lead for Cisco’s Inexperienced Crew Community. “For my part, giving again has the ability to unite folks to come back collectively to make larger impacts. Much more important and significant impacts will be made when there’s assist from companies. Via 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 Affect
Our collective actions have contributed to constructing a tradition the place serving communities in want has develop into a part of our DNA. Partaking at scale allows us to donate extra to nonprofits, reply to extra crises, enhance volunteering assist, and do extra good for the world.
Throughout International Volunteer Month, we acknowledge and rejoice all of the methods our workers make a constructive influence.
To study extra concerning the influence Cisco workers are making, try our “What We Completed” eBook about how we now have supported our workers’ giving again efforts and remodeled our collective contributions within the course of.
Share:
