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.
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 immediately. It’s an necessary facet 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.
Staff 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—nevertheless it’s not simply financial donations which might be eligible for matches. By means of this system, workers may also 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 not too long ago partnered with Hearty Basis, a neighborhood group that helps youngsters’s training and social welfare. Cisco workers organized a sequence of workshops for college students targeted 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 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. Staff from across the globe attended and discovered 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,” stated Meraki Offers International Co-lead Racha Tfaili. “By getting their time matched with donations, workers not solely discovered in regards to 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 Group Affect Portal is a digital device that allows workers each to arrange volunteer occasions for others to affix and to enroll in volunteering. Volunteering could 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 children find out about know-how.
“In FY24, our buyer engineering workforce had 100% participation in volunteering” says Buyer Supply Chief Monica Huerta Castillo. “Cisco’s Group Affect Portal helped us determine volunteer alternatives. We’ve achieved 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 workforce tradition—which incorporates our values of belief, humility, empathy, and curiosity—is strengthened once we volunteer collectively. If we will affect the world as a workforce, think about what we will do inside Cisco!”
In 2025, we’re making it simpler for workers to seek out and be part of volunteer occasions by our new companywide quarterly International Week of Giving. Began organically by considered one of our enterprise models, we acknowledged the ability of a targeted week that brings our workers collectively. That’s why we’re increasing this system to be out there to all workers. We companion with group teams in focus areas equivalent to training, sustainability, meals safety, and poverty.
Paid Time Off for Volunteering
One other means we help 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 trip with common volunteering in colleges. Nonetheless others have used their time to provide specialised expertise to nonprofits equivalent 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 received my palms soiled—mixing cement, slicing metal wires, and laying bricks,” stated 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 purpose to have 80% of workers give again to their communities not 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 a number of totally different types. Organized volunteer efforts have worth, however so can doing one thing good for a neighbor in want. That’s why workers may also contribute to our 80% purpose by Cisco Citizen, a program that acknowledges volunteer efforts not lined by different packages.
In FY24, we as soon as once more hit our 80% purpose with 70,000 Cisco workers world wide performing 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,” stated Digital Advertising and marketing Supervisor Vivien Chia, who can be the APJC Lead for Cisco’s Inexperienced Staff Community. “For my part, giving again has the ability to unite folks to return collectively to make higher impacts. Much more important and significant impacts could be made when there may be help from companies. By means of the Matching Items Program, Time2Give, and the Cisco Citizen volunteer monitoring program, we will 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 change into a part of our DNA. Partaking 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 rejoice all of the methods our workers make a constructive affect.
To be taught extra in regards to the affect Cisco workers are making, try our “What We Achieved” eBook about how we’ve supported our workers’ giving again efforts and remodeled our collective contributions within the course of.
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