When it comes to local community involvement, Cisco employees are generous with their time and money as individuals and as members of taskforces and councils.

Cisco Citizens are employees who donate money or volunteer their time to nonprofit organizations, community projects, and various charities. The Cisco Foundation provides up to $1000 per employee each calendar year in general gift-matching funds, and it matches funds raised during team volunteer events over and above that amount. The Cisco Foundation also matches Cisco Citizens’ volunteer hours at eligible organizations up to $1000 ($10 per volunteer hour). This contribution is in addition to the matching funds for team volunteer events.

This year Cisco Citizens supported a broad range of causes through more than 200 separate team fundraising campaigns. From August 2007 to July 2008, Cisco Citizens helped administer more than 35 team match campaigns. On average, 45 to 50 active fund-raising campaigns are underway at any given time.

During FY08:

  • Team match campaigns raised $1,140,000 in employee donations, which were matched by $1,059,000 in Cisco Foundation donations.
  • As of September 28, 2008, employees had logged more than 91,000 hours during which they volunteered in FY08.
  • In the United States alone, 481 employees reported serving on nonprofit boards.
  • Cisco integrated Civic Leadership/Volunteer service as part of the employee development plan in our annual review process for FY09.
  • Cisco partnered with Universal Giving to add 39 international NGOs to iGive, the employee online giving tool, including nine green NGOs.

Many Ways To Give

Here are some examples of the many ways Cisco Citizens worked to benefit their communities during the year:

  • More than 100 Cisco employees from eight countries volunteered at the Eden Handicap Service Center in Penang, Malaysia, working alongside adults and children who rely on the center for social activities, transportation, and learning skills.
  • Cisco Citizens collected $6000 for care packages for U.S. soldiers overseas and sent 556 telephone calling cards.
  • Sixty Cisco Australia employees participated in the Community Links program, which contacts isolated or marginalized elderly clients on a daily basis for a five-minute chat to ensure their mental and physical well-being.
  • Cisco Netherlands employees created a “viral video” to be used in fundraising for War Child International, an international organization that helps children affected by war. Every time the video was forwarded, Cisco Netherlands donated 1 euro; a total of €28,493 ($38,737) was donated.
  • During the Ramadan holiday, Cisco Gulf and its employees donated over-the-counter medications to the Red Crescent aid organization and collected back-to-school items for the Al Manar Al Imam school in Al Ain, United Arab Emirates (UAE), which serves more than 2500 orphans and underprivileged children. In addition, the Gulf Marketing Team visited the Rashid Pediatric Therapy Centre in Dubai, UAE, where they donated laptop computers, monitors, printers, and educational software, and spent the morning playing with the children.
  • Cisco employees in Saudi Arabia raised funds to sponsor an “Orphans’ Day Out” at a local amusement center in Riyadh. The initiative, organized in cooperation with the Orphanage Home in Olaisha, hosted 150 children for a day of fun and activities to raise the children’s morale and encourage solidarity between Cisco staff and the community.

Introduce Yourself to Some Cisco Citizens

Meet Dean McCully
Dean McCully is one very busy and dedicated Cisco Citizen. When the Cisco Citizen effort first began, McCulley volunteered to create and maintain the nonprofit nomination page that enables employees to have their favorite charities nominated for the Cisco iGive donations system. This year McCully was also busy planning for the Fourth Annual Shared Adventures & EAA119 Day in the Sky Event, held in Watsonville, California, on April 19. At this event, hundreds of special-needs children got the opportunity to fly in a small plane, thanks to volunteer private pilots.

 

Meet Scott Brown and Lori Volpe
For the last two years, Scott Brown, vice president of Worldwide Sales Enablement, and his executive assistant, Lori Volpe, have been the executive sponsor and the campaign captain, respectively, for the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation (JDRF) Cisco team in the Research Triangle Park (RTP) area of North Carolina. Cisco’s RTP office has been a supporter of the Triangle Walk to Cure Diabetes for the past six years and has raised more than $467,000 for JDRF during that time. This year the team had 288 walkers and raised more than $167,000, which represented 13 percent of the total contributions. Brown, Volpe, and their team of sales managers also use the Triangle Walk as a tool to teach sales associates about competition, setting goals, forecasting, and other professional skills.

 

Meet Joni Blakeslee
When Joni Blakeslee isn’t on the road for her job as manager of business development for Cisco Digital Media Systems, you might find her volunteering for Inspiring Girls Now In Technology Evolution (IGNITE), an innovative program that connects high-school girls with professional women in technology. Blakeslee got involved during the inception of IGNITE eight years ago and quickly became an enthusiastic proponent. “We talk to students about how we got interested in technology, and then show them the many different options that are available as career paths,” she says. “We get them to think about preparation through math and science courses and to ask real-world questions, such as: ‘What kind of career do I need in order to purchase a home in the city I want to live in?’”

 

Meet Martin Raines
Martin Raines, a software engineer at Cisco U.K., has a passion for keeping children safe—specifically, Internet safe. Raines has teamed with local primary schools and Childnet International to give regular volunteer presentations and lessons on safe Internet use. Childnet International is an NGO working with others to make the Internet a great and safe place for children. Raines has been doing this valuable work for nearly three years, making presentations to hundreds of children throughout Berkshire and Hampshire. Jessie Taylor, one of the teachers at Birch Copse primary school, says, “As a teacher, I was shocked by the large proportion of my class that had unrestricted access to the Internet and regularly used chat rooms online. Without a doubt, the session clearly highlighted the dangers of the Internet to children and also informed them on how to stay safe online.”

 

Meet Daud Yamin
Every two years, U.S. resident Daud Yamin goes back to his native Pakistan to visit family and contribute his time to two projects started by a small group of family and friends. The SAYA Free Medical Center provides healthcare to those who cannot afford it. The SAYA Technical Vocational Training Institute, founded this year, provides vocational training to high school graduates or near-graduates who are unable to go to college. Yamin taught five students basic computer skills such as word processing and spreadsheets, and also developed a computer networking curriculum. He is now working on a web development curriculum.

 

Meet Sunny Dong
Sunny Dong, who oversees university recruiting for Cisco in China, combines her day job with corporate social responsibility. For the past two years, she has led a “Girls in Technology Career Go” workshop for Peking University technology students. This year 13 Cisco volunteers, using a structured interactive workshop model from NGO Junior Achievement China, worked with 40 women students in small groups, sharing their personal work experiences and teaching them about career planning and interviewing skills through role playing. “All the students asked a lot of questions and said they were better prepared to look for jobs as a result of this workshop,” Dong says. Two girls from last year’s project are now working at Cisco. The workshops have been such a success that they will be held annually and hosted in three cities: Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou. “I was very impressed with how quickly Cisco employees wanted to participate in this project,” says Dong. “I had no problem getting the necessary number of workshop facilitators,” Dong also helps facilitate the “China Job Shadow” day program, which enables a group of students from Beijing to accompany or “shadow” Cisco employees to learn about their duties and work environments.