Avnet Cares–North Texas team helps students

Avnet’s global headquarters is here in Phoenix and, like a lot of companies who are relatively new to doing community outreach, we’ve been very corporate-centric, over the years.  Luckily, our employees outside of Phoenix, left to their own devices, have established a lot of really great grass roots programs.  Following is an excerpt from an internal publication, our CR newsletter, Building Communities.  Our employee volunteer program is called Avnet Cares.  This is from the North Texas Avnet Cares team:

Employees who keep their eyes and ears open for community relations opportunities find them everywhere they go. Jim Strand, vice president of financial operations in Richardson, Texas, found one at a Chamber of Commerce meeting three years ago – a local school whose students could not afford school supplies.
Richardson employees came to Forestridge Elementary’s rescue for the past three school years, collecting paper, pencils, pens, crayons, glue, notebooks and a variety of other items for students as well as note cards, Post-it notes and tote bags for teachers.
“Forestridge is an exemplary school – many students are from Africa and Vietnam and have never been to school before,” says Judy Kuper, records manager in Richardson. “The North Texas Avnet Cares committee saw this as a good opportunity to work with our community – this year we delivered six large boxes of supplies.”
With enrollment hitting 700 this year, the supplies were especially needed, says Forestridge principal Kathy Higgins. “Please let everyone know how big a difference it makes to the students when they have the things they need in order to be successful.”
Higgins also uses some of the supplies as rewards for the 150 students attending Forestridge’s Saturday English as a Second Language classes.

What I love about this story is that it hits so many of our targets (which are children’s issues, education, and partnerships).  And, once again, to belabor the point, not only have they focused on children’s issues and education, but they have further honed in on a target and a purpose … not only are they helping a school, but they are helping children with very specific needs.  Like I said last week, when budgets are at risk, you can’t be all things to a large audience.  So here, they are not only helping children, they are helping children who have never been to school before.  Talk about creating a big impact with only a small, but very meaningful, amount of effort!  Thanks Avnet Richardson for being such a great example of strategic community outreach!