I'm really excited about this one. My company has recently implemented a policy that allows all permanent full time and part time employees a day of paid volunteer leave in each calendar year.
The purpose of the volunteer leave is to encourage us to provide assistance and support to a charity or not-for-profit organisation with their charitable and/or community activities.
I'm particularly excited as this will allow me to get involved in something I'm really passionate about, children's literacy. I really believe that helping a child to not only learn to but enjoy reading, opens up a wealth of opportunities and possibilities for them.
I get paired up (with another volunteer) and matched with a year five or six student to provide one-on-one reading mentoring and support. Every week, we will alternate visiting the school and reading with the student for an hour. So I’ll visit the school once a fortnight for the whole school term.
My police check (required when working with children of course) is all through, so I'm now just waiting for the training to kick off and we start in May with the kids.
I'm so excited! This something I've wanted to get involved with for years, but due to school hours being shorter than my working hours I've never been able to find a way to do it, and now I can with my companies endorsement! Even better is that due to my living so close to work, it's one of my local schools so I'm really helping my local community.
Does your company offer or get involved in anything similar as part of their corporate responsibility programs?
Thursday 3 April 2008
Work Perks – Volunteer Leave
Posted by Debt Dieter Labels: dreams, work, work perks
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Intuit does. I took almost 3 weeks off when I worked there to go to Louisiana after Katrina. I helped take care of the rescued horses. I believe a week was volunteer time off and the rest was vacation.
ReplyDeleteWhen I was HP, everyone in my department took the day off and build an adventure playground with group of other people from other companies. It was one of the best donation that I have made, and the effect was immediate.
ReplyDeleteI should suggest this at my present company. Thanks for the reminder!
That's great cindys & tehnyit, I'm glad to hear we're not the only ones out there doing this sort of thing.
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