Corporate Partners Spotlight
Throughout the year, our program participants and sites are positively impacted by generous contributions from local corporations and their employees. Here are three shining examples of how partnerships with the community mean so much to us, our program participants, corporations, and volunteers.
In the spring of this year, our Omegon program was chosen as a community partner for Comcast Cares Day, which is their annual company-wide day of volunteerism. Omegon, which offers intensive treatment services to youth with mental health and chemical dependency challenges, is housed in one of our older buildings that needs a lot of love – and Comcast brought the love. Over 30 Comcast employees, along with the friends they recruited from Extreme Yardworks, Herman’s Landscape Supplies, and Siwek Lumber & Millwork, donated their time, talents, and supplies to upgrade the landscaping around Omegon, transform our gymnasium, and even install a backstop for baseball. As one youth resident so eloquently greeted Comcast team leaders, Tom Elliot and Joe Thill, “Welcome to Homegone” – Home, indeed!
Bowling is backbreaking work as well, but a little more fun! In July, over 130 bowlers who recruited their own sponsors to raise funding for Volunteers of America of Minnesota, participated in our annual Bowling for Backpacks event. We were thrilled with the level of participation and enthusiasm of the bowling teams, which included teams from: Best Buy (Rogers), Boston Scientific, Buca di Beppo (Maple Grove), CDW , Central Bank, Crowne Plaza, Edina Care Center, Hilton, National Weather Service, Omegon, Tremendous!Entertainment, TwinWest Chamber of Commerce, VOA National Services, Wells Fargo.
While we needed all of your efforts to make Bowling for Backpacks so successful this year, we would like to give special recognition to the Wells Fargo team, led by team captain, Craig Drevecky, for being the top fundraising team, collecting $2,300 in contributions for Volunteers of America of Minnesota.
Bowling for Backpacks kicked off our annual Operation Backpack drive to collect new backpacks filled with school supplies for low-income students heading back to school this year. For the second year, Qwest made a company-wide commitment to collect 600 stuffed backpacks for local students. Through this donation and grant funding for our Experience Corps program, Qwest has proven to us once again this year that they are committed to supporting low-income students and promoting quality education programs. In addition to Qwest, other corporate groups like 3M, Beckman Coulter, Minnesota Public Radio, Digineer, Optum Health and others, also participated in large onsite backpack drives, bringing the Operation Backpack total to over 1,200 backpacks for our kids in need! Thank you so much for your amazing support!