December 3, 2015
Most of us hold the holiday season close to our hearts as it is a time to share gratitude for life’s blessings. It’s a time to celebrate with family, friends, and loved ones the things and people in our lives that we’re thankful for (and to enjoy delicious food)! Sadly, not everyone is fortunate enough to share in this bounty. Some don’t have enough food, or a place of their own to eat. Feeling grateful for the amazing year Aria has had, we came together as a team and decided that we wanted to support a local charity focused on fighting hunger and making a difference in our community.
In the spirit of Thanks(giving), we decided to hold our first company food drive in November. Themed “Let’s ‘CAN’ hunger,” the drive supported The Community Day Center of Waltham. The center serves homeless individuals and those in need in and around the Waltham community, and strives to create a place which offers safety, trust, education, and a sense of belonging to those individuals seeking to overcome adversity and reintegrate back into society. As a team, we set the donation goal of collecting a total of 250 non-perishable items over the period of two weeks.
In order to stay on track, we marked our progress on a “food drive thermometer” we drew on a conference room white board. It was exciting and motivating to watch the numbers on our donation thermometer go up & up until we reached, and exceeded, our goal on the last day of the food drive. We’re proud to report we collected a total of 255 items!
I have always been very passionate about giving back to the community and empowering others to do the same, so I was truly moved by everyone’s enthusiasm and commitment to donate to this worthy cause. The day we dropped off the donations, we hosted a company lunch to reflect on our experience with the food drive, and it was a really fantastic feeling to hear that everyone felt humbled by this initiative and wanted to participate in another drive next year.
Since this food drive was a success, and the experience served as a valuable team-bonding activity for our company, we decided to officially kick off a year-round volunteer initiative so that we have more opportunities to participate as a team to make a bigger difference in our community. I look forward to helping plan the next Aria volunteer initiative!
