On the cusp of May and June, 3,500 volunteers in Poland will set off to help local communities. Citi Global Community Day, a global initiative of Citi, under which volunteers donate blood, implement ecological projects and help seniors, is now beginning. The Citi Handlowy Leopold Kronenberg Foundation, the coordinator of the action, estimates that this year help will reach several dozen thousand people.
Volunteering has been an effective part of our organization's DNA. It is one of the strongest non-wage incentives to motivate and strengthen the involvement of teams, but on the other hand volunteering is one of the best tools for the self-development of our employees. This year, we are no longer actually asking our employees whether they will "join" in volunteer campaigns, as almost every second Citi employee is involved in community service. Today we are rather asking our employees when and what they want to change for the better, says Sławomir S. Sikora, President of the Management Board of Citi Handlowy.
What does Citi Global Community Day bring about? A real social change. First the needs of individual organizations are identified, and then they are addressed through the volunteers? work, who take care of the facility. The projects concentrate around three areas: financial and digital education, support for excluded groups, improvement of living conditions (including ecology). Each year, not only employees of Citi in Poland and their families, but also clients, business partners and organizations cooperating with the Bank join the action.
I am also glad that we manage to share the idea of volunteering with our business partners and clients, who are willing to participate in our activities or make decisions to build their own volunteering programs, emphasizes Sławomir S. Sikora, President of the Management Board of Citi Handlowy.
This year alone, volunteers will plant in Warsaw over 1,000 anti-smog plants, and take part in one of the biggest blood donation initiatives (organized with the Capital City of Warsaw). Citi experts will provide content-related support to young entrepreneurs during acceleration sessions. Volunteers will also do renovation works at many educational care facilities, hospices, hospitals etc.
We have replaced typical integration trips with those related to work for the benefit of those in need. In June alone, we will organize more than 10 such meetings with our 500 volunteer employees. We also want our actions to bring about specific social changes. Being aware that we can make a difference for the better gives us, Citi volunteers, the greatest satisfaction. That is why this year we are working in three areas of change: financial and digital education; ecology and improvement of living conditions and support for the excluded groups. Together, we will implement over 200 projects in these areas, says Sławomir S. Sikora, President of the Management Board of Citi Handlowy.
One of the foundations of the Citi Global Community Day is the possibility of the Bank?s employees to implement their original volunteering projects. Every year, a grant competition ?Volunteer to Bank on!? is organized as part of the action. Employees can obtain grants for their original volunteering projects. It is a great added value ? volunteers themselves choose the organization they want to help, gather a team, design a work schedule and budget ? they make all the decisions themselves. Due to the fact that they are responsible for all the stages of the project implementation ? from the idea to the grant settlement ? they give their 100% to the project. During the 13 years of the Citi Global Community Day, volunteers helped almost 300,000 people.
Volunteering is my passion, says a volunteer of Citi Handlowy, Katarzyna Nowak. Every year, our team meets with the kids from the educational care facility and we show them the tricks of different trades. We want them to know that every profession has many aspects to it and that there are different professional paths. In order to help them remember what we want to convey, we try to make every project unique ? by inviting guests and preparing interesting materials. During this year?s Citi Global Community Day, we will show kids the profession of a landscape architect ? they will have a chance to design and set up their own garden.
Project objectives, assumed already in the first stage of planning the action, get me motivated to act , says Łukasz Olesiejuk, a volunteer from CSC Poland. Visualization of the end product gives me determination to do something valuable the best I can, paying attention to all the details. I always get positive energy from the commitment of the volunteers themselves as well as the facilities we work with, the synergy of work and great fun, and an absolutely phenomenal atmosphere during the implementation of the projects. Although we are all usually physically exhausted after the completion of an initiative, the annual results of our works give us strength and motivation to organize more undertakings.
The program of the Employee Volunteering at Citi is the biggest program of its kind in Poland. According to the annual surveys conducted by the Kronenberg Foundation among employees, the most popular projects are those assuming renovation and cleaning works (as indicated by as many as 80% of the respondents). Another conclusion from the survey is that employee volunteering affects the perception of Citi as their employer in the case of 83% of respondents. For 96% of them the influence is positive or definitely positive. It is also worth noting that it is mainly volunteers who better assess their employer from the angle of employee volunteering. Volunteers also better assess the general climate of social responsibility at Citi.
