Deutsche Post DHL calls upon its 500,000 employees to participate in Global Volunteer Day (GVD) for the sixth year in a row. During this year’s official GVD period, employees from all business units will again team up with independent organizations and charities to help in numerous non-profit projects to benefit the local communities in which they live.
As Christof Ehrhart, Executive Vice President of Corporate Communications and Responsibility at Deutsche Post DHL Group, explains, the Global Volunteer Day 2016 motto – “Working Together for a Better World” – stresses the importance the company places on collaboration: “Employee volunteerism lies at the core of our efforts to connect people and improve their lives. Our GVD activities highlight the fact that when our employees join forces, not only do they donate their energy and skills to help their local communities, but they also grow together as a team. They achieve common goals, they enjoy and are proud of what they do, and they incorporate the GVD spirit into their daily work.”
In addition to a wide range of specially planned activities for the core GVD period, many employees remain active year-round, cementing lasting ties with the charitable organizations with which they work. Entirely separate from GVD, more than 13,000 Deutsche Post DHL Group employees in Germany have volunteered to participate in initiatives to help refugees. The Group thus operates a dedicated fund to which employees can apply for financial support on behalf of the projects they themselves commit to all year round.
The vast majority of GVD projects at Deutsche Post DHL Group focus on one or other of the company’s long-standing GoTeach, GoHelp and GoGreen initiatives. Many activities take place in kindergartens and schools, while others take the form of job application workshops.
However, others see employees volunteer to help people in need, becoming involved in restructuring efforts to rebuild homes in the wake of natural disasters or by organizing donation drives. And as environmental protection remains a major concern for many employees, some choose to plant trees, clean waste from beaches and parks, and support the upcycling trend by turning old, discarded materials into something useful and new.
Deutsche Post DHL Group launched Global Volunteer Day in 2008. By 2015, over 110,000 employees were involved in providing support to non-profit projects in their local communities as part of the GVD program, contributing more than 260,000 volunteer hours in more than 2,000 individual projects in 114 countries around the world. As an integral component of our Corporate Citizenship activities, Global Volunteer Day supports our sustainability strategy to serve the company’s economic interests and those of our stakeholders’ while balancing these with social and environmental needs.