Have you heard of Giving? It is an internal volunteer program from Apple that, among other actions, encourages employees to make donations to charities (Apple contributes the same amount for each donation registered to one of the NGOs participating in the program) and participate in the day of these institutions, with benefits for employees with volunteer hours.
Perhaps you have never heard of the program because it is not the kind of thing that Apple touts so strongly – but it is undeniable that it makes a difference, as this statement published today by Apple showed.
According to Apple, the Giving already generated, in its eight years of existence, more than $ 365 million in donations to charities; of these, more than $ 125 million was donated over the course of 2018 alone. Last year also saw Apple employees participate in volunteer activities for more than 250,000 hours in NGOs around the world.
Speaking of «around the world», Apple noted that it is one of the only global companies that take their volunteer program to China: there, 32 local institutions are eligible to receive Apple’s grant incentives. One is the Chinese Foundation to Combat Poverty, which in 2018 alone helped more than 175,000 people at risk or victims of disasters.
The Apple statement also highlighted some very cool initiatives by its employees, such as volunteers from the campus of Cork (Ireland), who visit the local school Terence MacSwiney (one of the most disadvantaged in the country) once a week to help teach photography, music, video, programming and drawing languages.
As the school principal, Phil O’Flynn stated:
We have a lot of students who have all the odds turned against them. But this program helped to educate them, and we discovered talents that we never knew they had. […] You need to create hope, no matter the context in which you work. Sometimes you need a little help with that, and that’s exactly what the program does – it raises the school.
As we highlighted on Instagram’s MacMagazine, who also visited a school (Dorsa Elemantary in San Jose, USA) recently was CEO Tim Cook, who took advantage of Martin Luther King Day to ask more people to volunteer and contribute to a better world.
Incredible, isn’t it? ?
