Yoga Fest and the Yin/Yang of CR

I’m heading up to Flagstaff, Ariz. for a yoga festival this weekend and, unfortunately, I blew out my knee about a week ago so not sure how much yoga I’m going to be able to do.  Guess I’ll have to stick to the yin classes.  But isn’t that just life, learning to balance out our yin and yang?

It’s the same way with community outreach. We are in the process of doing our “Avnet In the Community Highlights” for the year-end report synopsis that our CEO does for employees.  I couldn’t help but notice, in looking at our slides, there was a lot of yin and yang in the outreach projects our employees from around the world chose to adopt:

• In Peabody, Mass., their holiday event raised $10,680, including an Avnet Inc. match, for Toys for Tots.  In addition, customers, suppliers & employees donated $4,000 in toys.
• Employees in The Netherlands, with support from vendors & customers, raised €5,000 for children in crisis.
• Our U.K. team raised £1,497.25 for a Comic Relief fundraiser.
• For two years, the San Antonio, Texas office has made birthdays happier for children living at Boysville, a home for children in crisis who cannot remain in their own homes for a variety of reasons.
• Avnet employees in Westminster, Colo., inspired by the Summer Olympics last year, organized a track-and-field day of their own and turned it into a fundraiser to benefit There with Care, a nonprofit organization supporting children and families facing critical illnesses.
• The Singapore office received a “Causing Social Impact Award” from the Lions Club for sponsorship of and participation in Eye Spectacles for the Elderly project.
• One of our European offices donated 8,000€ to Rettet den Regenwald, an organization committed to saving the rainforest, on behalf of employees participating in the “By Bike to EBV” program.  Employees rode more than 53,000 km, preventing 9,000 kilos of carbon dioxide.
• In Richardson, Texas, employees have helped out at, for the past three school years, Forestridge Elementary School by collecting school supplies and other items for students, as well as Post-it notes and tote bags for teachers.  Many Forestridge students are from Africa and Vietnam and have never been to school before.

This is a random sample of the projects employees adopted.  This is the yin of community outreach work, employees doing what they are passionate about.  As I mentioned in previous blogs, now that we have the Avnet Cares Governing Board, we hope to add a little more structure, the yang, to Avnet Cares so that we can better support our employees in the community service work they are already passionate about.  Not too much structure, mind you.  It’s more like, “what can we do to support them and make their work easier.”  Much like the knee brace I will be wearing to the Yoga Fest this weekend.

Did I mention that it is going to be 108 in Phoenix this weekend and only 74 in Flagstaff?  I’ll take a little bit of that yin-like weather; it will help me get through the rest of the yang-like August in the Valley of the Sun.