Community
Making a Difference in Communities Worldwide
Our drivers and other employees are among the first to see the world's homeless, under-educated and abused. They also see our future — the people who will become tomorrow's UPS drivers, programmers and customers.
We all care about the communities we live and work in, but it often seems that the needs of the less fortunate are too great for one person to affect. By promoting community service as a company-wide value, UPS and its employees transcend these limitations, harnessing our collective effort in ways that make a real difference in communities across the globe.
Neighbor to Neighbor Program
This program is at the heart of UPS's philanthropic outreach. Through the Neighbor to Neighbor program, UPS employees organize food drives, work in soup kitchens, mentor troubled youth and help impoverished communities across the U.S. and around the world. UPS’s employees also volunteer their time as members of boards of directors of nonprofit and non-governmental organizations.
In 2008, volunteers logged an astounding 1.2 million hours through the program.
Sharing Our Expertise
Through its global giving strategies, The UPS Foundation helps charitable organizations improve their volunteer management practices. UPS employees contribute their time and talents to this effort by providing training in volunteer management based on UPS business principles and practices. Through the publication of A Guide to Investing in Volunteer Resources Management: Improve Your Philanthropic Portfolio, we help other grant makers understand the value of and invest more strategically in effective volunteerism.
Global Volunteer Month
The culminating event for UPS employee-volunteers is Global Volunteer Month. For the past five years, thousands of UPS employees in more than 50 countries have helped paint schools, assist food banks, renovate shelters and complete many other tasks in their communities.
What started in 2003 as a week-long effort has grown into a month-long commitment to build, beautify and better our communities. UPSers in neighborhoods and villages across the globe dedicate an entire month to community service.
UPS employees in each participating country and operating unit select the partners and volunteer activities that will best serve the area’s specific needs, partnering with nearly 200 nonprofit organizations and schools in communities around the world.
United Way Partnership
United Way's 121-year history is built on the proven effectiveness of local organizations helping people in their own communities. This shared ideal has sustained a special partnership between UPS and United Way.
Since this powerful partnership began in 1982, UPS people and The UPS Foundation have contributed US$872 million to United Ways in the United States, Canada, and Puerto Rico.
Community Internship Program
Feeding the homeless, repairing homes and tutoring inmates are not the activities you would typically find in a training course for senior-level managers — except at UPS.
Founded in 1968, the Community Internship Program (CIP) is an intense management training course designed to immerse senior-level executives in the social and economic challenges faced by their communities. During the program, managers leave their jobs and families to spend a month living and working in one of four CIP sites run by local non-profit agencies.
CIP aids UPS in developing and strengthening its managers, while helping to improve the communities where its employees live and work. After four weeks of learning and hands-on community service, UPS managers leave with a sense of accomplishment, community involvement and a greater sensitivity to those less fortunate. Gary Wu, a CIP intern from North Asia, summed up the experience this way: “I started to realize how small the world is by looking at the realities that others experience. It was not easy or joyful at the beginning, but very worth it at the end. I was able to cross my boundaries and expand my capacity to care and serve others.”
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Did You Know?
Roughly 1,000 volunteers worldwide participated in UPS’s first Global Volunteer Week in 2003; by the fifth annual Global Volunteer Week in 2007, participation had grown to more than 35,000 UPS employees.